THE GIANT FOREST DISTRICT
The Giant Forest is the name given the largest grove of sequoias, which is more than a grove. It is a Brobdingnagian forest. Here is found the General Sherman Tree, perhaps the oldest and largest living thing, 36.5 feet at its greatest diameter and 272.4 feet high. There are scores of trees almost as large as the General Sherman, hundreds over 10 feet in diameter, and many thousand from the seedling stage upward.
In his book, Our National Parks, John Muir says, "* * * I entered the sublime wilderness of the Kaweah Basin. This part of the Sequoia belt seemed to me the finest, and I then named it 'The Giant Forest.' It extends, a magnificent growth of giants grouped in pure temple groves, ranged in colonnades along the sides of meadows or scattered among the other trees, from the granite headlands overlooking the hot foothills and plains of the San Joaquin back to within a few miles of the old glacier fountains at an elevation of 5,000 to 8,400 feet above the sea."
Giant Forest is also the name of the village beneath the sequoias where the Giant Forest Lodge and the housekeeping and auto camps are situated. Its summer population is about 3,000.
THE MEADOWS
The beauty of the Giant Forest region is much enhanced by the many upland meadows, flower-strewn from the first blossoming of the amethystine cyclamen, or shooting stars in May, to the golden autumn glow of the goldenrod in September. The best-known meadows are Round, Circle, Crescent, and Log, all within 2 miles of Giant Forest Camp.