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Updated: May 3, 2025
In the Olympic and Sierra Nevada ranges the most western outlier of this northern band of vegetation probably contains the most inspiring forests of the world. There grow the vigorous Oregon pines, firs, and spruces, and the still more famous Big Trees or sequoias.
"Why, then," it will be asked, "are sequoias always found only in well-watered places?" Simply because a growth of sequoias creates those streams. The thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every sequoia grove he will find running water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of the grove being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the water being there.
Then pack your lunch basket, don your khaki suit, and strike out on the trail, while the dew still twinkles on the grass blades like cut diamonds, and the birds are singing their Te Deum to the morning sun. It was on just such a day that we set out on a trip to Muir Woods and the giant sequoias, one of the most beautiful spots in the State.
But a thousand men of majesty could be placed unseen in one tiny rift in this gorge, and all the sequoias of the world could be planted in one stretch of this Canyon, and never be noticed by the most careful watcher on the rim.
The morning was as Godfrey had foreseen, no rain had fallen since the previous evening, and when he stepped forth from Will Tree, the first rays of the sun were lightly gilding the thick dome of the sequoias. Carefinotu was at his post, where he had passed the night. He was waiting.
To-day the native races of North America are agitated by discussions over that great philosophic question, "Do the trees grow or were they created?" That the grass grows they admit, but the orthodox philosophers stoutly assert that the forest pines and the great sequoias were created as they are.
If she produced the Sequoia gigantea, or the great redwood tree of our California Sierra, as far back as the Crustaceous period, she has propagated it ever since according to her own loving methods, and it is idle to talk of the Sequoia Langsdorfii as being the original ancestor of this tree, or any other distinguished branch of the sequoias.
Also, if I had but seen them, there would be much to say about the magnificent conifers of the great West, from the giant red-woods, or sequoias, of the Mariposa grove in California to the richly varied pines of the Rockies.
These properties will be protected, but all other groves, in which are the giant Sequoias, are in great danger. There has recently been a movement by the government toward purchasing the Calaveras grove, which has the finest collection of the big trees known, but nothing decided has been done. Meantime there are a number of mills engaged in devouring this noble forest.
As many of these pines are assumed to be near a thousand years old, the epoch of the "great fire" is supposed to be earlier still, and as the Sequoias have not outgrown the fire-scars in all that time, they are supposed to have then arrived at their full growth.
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