Clarence King, the distinguished geologist and first Director of the United States Geological Survey, had a number of mountain-climbing experiences in this Greater Sequoia region. These are tellingly related in that classic volume, "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada." John Muir also wrote of this region, and it seems fitting that this enlarged reservation should be called the "Muir National Park."
Here the skies and the weather are great changing attractions, and the big wild folk are alert neighbors. Here are forests made up of trees each of which is an heroic giant! Here the Ice King left vast and splendid stories. Here is perhaps the deepest gorge in this round world, and here the highest peak within the bounds of the States of the Union—a peak that commands vast and varied scenes. The streams and lakes are of the greatest. The variety of wild flowers is probably not equaled in any other park or territory. The birds, too, are numerously and abundantly represented.
If I were sentenced to end my days in a National Park of my choosing, without the least hesitation I should choose the region now proposed for the Greater Sequoia or Muir Park.
THE FOUR BROTHERS
SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK
THE BIG TREES
The General Sherman is the largest tree on earth, and it may be the oldest living object that has a place in the sun. It is thirty-six and one-half feet in diameter and two hundred and eighty feet high. Nearly as large are the General Grant and the Grizzly Giant. A number of veteran sequoias are more than thirty feet in diameter and nearly three hundred feet high. Many are more than twenty feet in diameter, and thousands have a diameter of ten feet or more.
The Big Tree (Sequoia gigantea) is scattered in thirty-two groves along the western slopes of the Sierra for a distance of two hundred and sixty miles. Most of the trees are between the altitudes of five thousand and eight thousand feet. There are gaps of miles between groves. The southern extension has a continuous forest for seventy miles, except where it is cut in two by cañons, and it contains a majority of all Big Trees. There are three Big-Tree groves in the Yosemite National Park, one in the General Grant, and twelve in the Sequoia. One of these twelve is the famous Giant Forest.
The Sequoia and General Grant National Parks have more than a million Big Trees. Of these, more than twelve thousand are ten or more feet in diameter. A few of these trees are upwards of three hundred feet high, but the majority are about two hundred and fifty feet.
Galen Clark, who made a long and careful study of the Big Trees, expressed the opinion that the Grizzly Giant was at least six thousand years old. A number may be four thousand or more years of age, but the majority probably are less than three thousand. Careful counts of the annual rings of trees that have been felled show that a number of these had lived more than three thousand years. One had more than four thousand annual rings. W. L. Jepson, author of "The Trees of California," believes that the general tendency is to exaggerate the age of the living Big Trees.