Chapter III: Part TWO (1)

Giant Sequoias _of the_
Mariposa Grove

+Chapter III+

GALEN CLARK

The Giant Sequoia must have afforded pride and pleasure to the Creator for it is the finest tree He ever made. Of a truth, there is not in all the world a tree more wonderful.

And yet, man has flouted this “shade of His perfection.” Under its shadow he has neglected to gain inspiration and strength. In the restless trend of the times he has become engrossed in empty pleasures. In the agitation and strife for wealth individual interests, and not those of posterity, have become of moment. As a result only that which offers the allurement of gain has been recognized in the great Sequoia. Its solemn and stately forests have been invaded by the axe and commercialism has turned reverence, not into beams and pillars for places of worship, but into supports for grape vines and barbed wire.

Fortunately, the Mariposa Grove has escaped the fate which the axe has brought many of its brethren. Like the groves of yore that were God’s first temples it still stands, a virgin forest. The fluted columns of its mighty trees are softened by the touch of centuries, and so harmoniously are these venerable columns disposed that splendid colonades are formed, giving the effect of a vast, many-pillared hall. The airy masses of foliage that these great trunks mingle high in the heavens form cathedral-like archways of the finest forest ceilings imaginable. These magnificent interlaced archways soften the glare of day and impart a dim religious light which suffuse shifting mosaics of light and shade over the forest floor. Even the thick layers of crumbling bark and the dessicated dust of ages serve to deaden the footfall of the wanderer and to invest the gloom with a profound silence. A deep Sabbath-like calm broods in the very air. Indeed, all seems eloquent of worship. Here Nature stands with arms uplifted.

None escape the sacred influence of such a grove. None, save possibly the white man. Deer with eyes of soft innocence trip timorously through it; burly brown bear never shuffle heedlessly down its winding aisles; and rarely does the noisy, impudent jay muster sufficient courage to disturb its serenity. The Indian with his stone axe never harmed it, nor has the myth that he lighted his fires against its trunks, thus “wantonly destroying that which he was too rude to reverence,” been substantiated. It is only civilized man who violates such a sanctuary “just so long,” as John Muir so pithily expressed it, “as fun or a dollar can be gotten out of them.”

Truly, the ways of man are at times past understanding. Under roofs that his frail hands have raised he worships, yet he destroys with utter disregard a Sequoian grove—a temple not made with human hands. Such acts may be damaging. They may even be bad. But they are manifestations of human nature—of the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter. Happily, there are those among men who are of more than common clay. Such a man was Galen Clark. It was he who first made known to the world the Mariposa Grove and who faithfully guarded it for well nigh a quarter of a century. He, above all others, rendered it the most completely free from the axe and preserved it in the condition in which his eyes first beheld it. Lest man forget, he saved it as a place of play and prayer.

Galen Clark came to California in the days of the gold boom. Strictly speaking, he was not of the Argonauts of ’49, since he was not seized by the spell of the gold fever until 1853. Shaking the dust of New York from his feet in October of that year, he joined the eager multitudes who flocked toward the new El Dorado. The year 1854 found him in the country of Mariposa taking part in the pick and shovel storm that was then raging on its mountains. Not unlike the majority, he failed to find “a chartless river running on fabled sands of gold.” The chase of the fabulous ended; he took up the less fascinating but more substantial occupation of a surveyor. Occasionally, however, the gold lure again possessed him and he spasmodically returned to mining with the flare-up of local bonanzas. It was while so engaged that he contracted, through exposure and hardships that had already filled the nooks of the gold region with the bones of strong men, a disease of the lungs. The physicians, unable to lessen the great number of hemorrhages, prophesied that he had not long to live. Now a member of the dreary brotherhood of failures, health and strength gone, and knowing that death would claim him soon, he did not become a dissolute miner. Instead of finding a refuge in strong drink, he sought solace through communion with the sweet wonders of the common earth and sky. In truth, he went home to Mother Nature, and became a wanderer finding peace on mountain tops and consolation in piney woods.

Singularly enough, his lungs healed. The climate had accomplished the miracle. The bland and salubrious air rendered pungent by the balsamic odor of Sierran forests, together with an abundance of health-giving exercise, had cured the disease. More strange still, Galen Clark attained the venerable age of ninety-six. Though he continued to lead the life of a mountaineer, and constantly to expose his person to calm and storm alike, he never suffered a recurrence of the malady.

It was during one of his mountain rambles that Galen Clark came upon the Mariposa Grove in May of 1857. Having toiled up the slope of a divide with the South Fork of the Merced flashing in its ravine far below, he paused at the summit for rest. Upon gazing around, to his amazement he was greeted by an immense tree. He immediately recognized it as of the same variety and genus as the mammoth trees of Calaveras which had so astounded the world subsequent to their discovery in 1852, and which were, supposedly, the only trees of their kind in existence. A cairn today marks the spot where Galen Clark caught his first glimpse of the Sequoia, and this first majestic shaft upon which his eyes rested in wonderment bears his name carved on a slab of granite hardly more enduring than the tree itself.

Though not alone in this discovery, it is quite certain that Galen Clark was the first white man to thoroughly explore the Mariposa Grove and to make it known to the public. According to his own testimony he was accompanied by one Milton Mann. “A few days later I was in the lower portion of the Grove,” writes the discoverer in Foley’s _Guide Book_, “and since the Grove was situated in Mariposa County, I named it the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees.” It is not certain, on the other hand, that Galen Clark and his companion were the first white men to walk through the Mariposa Grove. The dauntless prospector, undoubtedly, had also traversed this region. In his search for the imprisoned metal that seemed to cry out to him for liberation all of this hitherto unbroken solitude had become familiar ground to his feet. But if any gold-seekers beheld the Mariposa giants earlier than 1857, the discovery died with them.

It is sometimes claimed that one R. Hogg, a hunter employed by a water company to keep its camp supplied with venison and bear meat, discovered the Mariposa Grove in 1855. While in the pursuit of his calling, he came upon three trees of a different nature from any others in the forest. This he reported to Galen Clark and other acquaintances. Later, in the summer of 1857, and following the discovery of the Mariposa Grove, Galen Clark came upon the three trees reported by Hogg in a gulch about one-half mile southeast of the Big Tree grove. The largest of these stragglers, to which Hogg accredited a circumference of more than ninety feet, was so badly burned by a forest fire in 1864 that it was afterwards blown down during a storm. The other two eventually fell victims to the axe.

In April of his forty-third year (1857) Galen Clark settled on the South Fork of the Merced. He had visited Yosemite in 1855. Therefore, it was not without foresight that he staked out his claim beside the trail running from Mariposa to Yosemite in the year that the Mann brothers completed it. He selected a spot near the lovely expanse of the Wawona meadow which lies in a basin-like depression encircled by rolling mountains clad in forests of sugar pine that are no more. He built a crude log cabin, thus making the beginning of the white man’s Wawona.

Photo by A. C. Pillsbury]

It was not long before his visions of a teeming traffic that would some day wend its steady way before his door en route to the Yosemite became a reality. At first small straggling parties came at lengthy intervals, then larger groups, and finally a steady stream of eager travelers who desired to see the glories of Yosemite began to pass his way. His establishment, too, kept pace with the increasing travel. It varied from canvas and log to tolerably pretentious buildings as the seasons went by. With the advent of the sixties it was known as Clark’s Station, and was the heart of activity in this backwoods country. By this time a trail connected Clark’s with the Mariposa Grove. So impressed had the discoverer become with the importance of his find that he had built a good horse trail of four miles in length, thereby making the wonder trees of the Mariposa Grove more accessible to the world.

A trip to the Yosemite in these early days involved much of hardship without reward; much heat and dust and fatigue in the hope of enjoyment. A ninety-two mile stage ride was necessary before reaching Mariposa and an additional sixty miles on horseback. The first night of the horseback journey usually found the traveler at Clark’s, the second amid the solemn immensity of Yosemite’s granite cliff and domes at Black’s, the first structure in the Valley pretentious enough to be styled a hotel. Real enjoyment did not come until Clark’s was reached. Here the traveler had arrived at the outer edge of the civilized world and an atmosphere of romance surrounded the rest of the way. Europeans and New Yorkers were prone to class the trip in the same category as an expedition to little-known Tibet, and the friends of those who were determined on making it urged that such adventurers, before they left draw up their last wills and testaments. Nor is it to be wondered at that tourists returning from Yosemite after such a journey should speak vaguely of “obstacles and difficulties overcome and represent themselves as having a kind of undefinable claim to the character of heroes.”

Everyone who passed over the Mariposa trail carried away a pleasant memory of Galen Clark’s quaint wayside inn and long remembered its proprietor. The generous hospitality that he extended never failed to win the admiration of his guests. Even celebrities from abroad paid him tribute whenever they chanced to speak of him in later years, and always remarked that he had made them feel at home beneath his roof. The poor as well as the rich held him in esteem. No weary wanderer, no matter how low his fortune or how humble his pack, was ever turned away hungry or unrested. All were equally welcome, for he shared his loaf with Indian and white alike. Indeed, the natives in the country around loved him for his kind and gracious ways, sought his advice in council, and called him “Father Clark.”

The early guide books that tell of these incipient days of pilgrimages to the Yosemite rarely neglect to remark about the evenings spent about the open campfire of this simple, upright, kindly man. They tell how he presided over the social converse of the evening, how he narrated many a mirth-provoking anecdote, freely exchanging wit and wisdom, and all the while never indulging in boisterous laughter. They allude to those trifles which memory often cherishes—“the slight intonations of his voice indicating that something mildly sarcastic or funny was coming.” Lastly, they usually conclude with a picture of the great sugar pines, one hundred and fifty and two hundred feet high, solemnly standing guard, the files of their fellows extending back into the mystic blackness of the forest, the foremost calmly looking on the happy scene, their shadowy clusters of needles brightening and glowing in the flickering firelight.

Yet these noble qualities which Nature had planted in his being with such munificence unfitted Galen Clark as an inn-keeper. Business was too foreign to his temperament, and he was too utterly self-forgetful to win success. His friends multiplied fearfully and wonderfully, but fortune was unkind to him and led him into debt. So low had his estate fallen by 1869, when the Mariposa County survey was made, that he deeded half his Wawona property to one Edwin Moore. A few years later he borrowed money with which to make extensive improvements. These proved so unfortunately planned that foreclosure resulted. Again Galen Clark faced the most discouraging ordeal that can come to man—the making of a new start in life.

Until the late seventies the Mariposa Grove was accessible only by foot or horse. The beginning of the seventies witnessed the completion of the Mariposa road to Clark’s. In 1874 Washburn, Coffman, Chapman and Company were granted permission to extend the Mariposa road to Yosemite, with the privilege of collecting a moderate toll as compensation for its construction. This road, which is now known as the Wawona Road, reached the Valley in July of 1875. Its completion was celebrated in Mariposa in the true holiday manner of the early Californian. Bands and bluster and bunting were the order of the day. One prominent citizen of the community delivered a flowery oration and with an air of great electrical effulgence heralded the event as the dawn of a new era. Indeed, returning travelers from Yosemite could no longer lay claim to the laurels of heroes, for the journey was now considerably shorn of its “terrors.” During the spring of ’78 or ’79 the present road from Wawona to and through the Big Trees was built. The opening through the Wawona Tree in the Grove was made in one of these years and vehicles began to carry the curious of the world through this living tree. Clark’s Station was purchased by the Washburn Company in May of 1875, and with the advent of the eighties the present-day Wawona had seen its birth. Clark’s had become but a memory.

Contrary to popular opinion, the quaint Log Cabin which is so redolent with the breath of the fifties was not built shortly after the discovery of the Mariposa Grove. It was built much later, too late, in fact, to pose as “Galen’s Hospice” or to satisfy the lovely legend that it sheltered from the stormy blast wanderers who found themselves far from civilized habitation or human succor. Sentiment would fain preserve this myth. However, truth is firm and in all honor it must be stated that this cabin was not erected until 1885, and that it has never given shelter save to curios and their merchants. The report of the “Commissioners to manage the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees” of 1886 forever proves how palpably against the weight of authority this tale is. “Last year,” the report states, “a comfortable and artistic log cabin was erected at a central point in the Grove ... and ornamented by a shapely, massive chimney with a cavernous fireplace guarded by the traditional crane and pendant kettle.”

The first curio dealer to occupy the Log Cabin was “Old Cunningham.” This quaint character made his curios in a hollow tree with the aid of a jig-saw and tourists prized his wares the more knowing that they were made on the spot. When his purse was fat “Old Cunningham” would ride to Wawona to a saloon called the “Snow Plant,” where he was wont to present the bottle and spin yarns. Hutchings left posterity a delightful penciling of this old fellow. “The coach generally halts at a large and deliciously cool spring near the Cabin, where those who have come to spend the day will probably take lunch. Here, too, we shall have the pleasure of meeting Mr. S. M. Cunningham, who knows every tree by heart, its history, size, and name, and can tell you more about them in ten minutes than any man could in an hour (as is the usual case with such wags). I can see his bright and genial look, watch his wiry form and supple movements while I write. There is one thing especially noticeable about Mr. Cunningham—he is never discouraged and sees always the bright side of things, so that when a storm is swaying the tops of the trees until they bend together, he can listen interestedly and tell you laughable incidents until your sides ache.”

With the waning of the gold excitement and the waxing of a stable Statehood, those who were laying the foundations of the State began to turn their faces toward the future. Gradually they came to see the need of treasuring some of its natural heritages. They recognized the fact that California had been lavishly favored with great natural wonders. Nevertheless, they came to realize also that she was not so rich in these as to be careless or neglectful of their preservation. They likewise perceived, these far-seeing ones, that although California possessed all of the Giant Sequoias, they were the most perishable of all her treasures if left without protection. Destructive humanity can little change the sublime granite forms of Yosemite. They will always remain unspoiled, and mankind can hardly mar them more than could the clouds that hover about their summits or the butterflies that flit about their bases. It is true that man may plow Yosemite’s meadows and cut down wildflower gardens that have never known a mower. He can destroy its clusters of trees, rob Mirror Lake of its reflective charm, stop the flow of its waterfalls. All this he can do. But however much he tries he can but little alter or disturb the majestic repose of its rocks. Yet he can lay low in a single day a Sequoia that waved its arms to Sierran winds when the Carpenter of Nazareth was born. In one short season he can reduce a hallowed Sequoian grove to an expanse of blackened stubble where only charred stumps remain to mark where trees once stood and “looked at God all day.”

Fortunately, however, these builders of a commonwealth saw the light in time. Nor did they wink at it. Hence, the Mariposa Grove came to be made safe from the axe through seasonable legislation and was spared the fate that soon befell other Sequoian groves at the hands of greed and commercialism.

Fortunately, again, Galen Clark was appointed Guardian of the Mariposa Grove by the Governor. The choice was well and wisely made. In fact, when John Muir said, “Galen Clark is the sincerest tree lover I ever knew,” he spoke with fine truth and spirit. Never will Yosemite look again upon the likeness of such a man. In the performance of his duties as guardian of the Yosemite Grant he was not found wanting and proved himself sterling by every standard incident to human nature.

In 1864 when kinsmen in their bitterness and hatred were destroying one another, Senator Conness in behalf of certain influential citizens of California introduced a bill into Congress and the law-makers of Washington paused for a moment in the prosecution of the Civil War to pass the Act which granted to the State that “cleft or gorge in the Granite Peak of the Sierra Nevada Mountains ... known as the Yosemite Valley with its branches and spurs, in estimated length fifteen miles and in average width one mile back from the main edge of the precipice on each side of the valley ... and the tracts embracing what is known as the ‘Mariposa Big Tree Grove,’ not to exceed four square miles....” In addition to this the Act stipulated: “the said State shall accept this Grant upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation and shall be inalienable for all time.” President Lincoln approved the Act a few days before he made his famous speech on the field of the battle that broke the Southern blade. Shortly after this Governor Low of California formally issued a proclamation accepting the Grant. In it he warned all persons against willful and malicious trespassing and made it a misdemeanor to injure or destroy any of its treasures. In accordance with the terms of the Act, the Executive of California then appointed eight Commissioners to manage the Valley and the Big Tree Grove, naming Galen Clark as one of them. On the second of April, 1866, the State Legislature made formal and legal acceptance of the Grant and clothed the Commissioners with the necessary power to make such regulations as were requisite to its administration and control. At this time the Legislature also authorized the Governor to appoint a Guardian to take active charge of the Grove and the Valley. A small appropriation of two thousand dollars was made for the purpose of making improvements during the ensuing two years and an annual salary of five hundred dollars was voted the Guardian.

Rock cairn to left marks spot of discovery

MARIPOSA GROVE Photo by H. S. Hoyt]

Life is not always a picking of flowers; often it is a plowing of meadows strewn with hidden rocks. The latter proved to be the lot of the Commissioners in connection with the Yosemite, for their progress was blocked by the hostility of settlers who refused to relinquish their claims. Litigation resulted and the Commissioners encountered only censure and antagonism in their attempts to make of the Yosemite a playground for the people. Happily, they were not so handicapped in their management of the Big Tree Grove, yet here, too, they had difficulties to contend with.

Chiefly among these was the problem of human vandalism. Constant vigilance was necessary to guard against those who seemed to take an insatiable delight in destroying all within their reach. Truly, the besetting sin of all “pilgrims” the world over is their unquenchable lust for “specimens.” Like priests of the Capuchin Convent who “unfailingly show some memento of a saint—a bone of his body, a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood—before they extol his miracles,” the “pilgrims” who journey to Nature’s shrines must, at all hazard, carry away some bit of the shrine to awaken the wonder of the rustics at home. Or, if they are thwarted in this, it becomes imperative for them to inscribe their poor little names in some convenient place on the shrine so that all who run may read. What a pity some justly wrathful Sequoia cannot fall on some of these defamers and crush their “eyeballs into dust,” thereby intimidating them and their kind into forever desisting from such acts.

The Commissioners were plagued with vandals of yet another sort—the camper and the sheep-herder; the one starting forest fires through negligence, the other purposely to insure better grass for his “hoofed locusts.” In 1889 the Grove was threatened with disaster. A fire, started because of a camper’s carelessness or through the deliberate design of sheep-herders, secured sovereign possession of the surrounding forest and in one place invaded the Grove itself. In a few days the entire annual appropriation was used in saving the Grove from the angry flames. When their fury was finally conquered, black scars that only time could obliterate remained. It was this memorable fire that consumed the Lone Giant, the largest decumbent monarch in the Grove.

Since the Commissioners had no control over outside forests bordering on the Grove, this calamity indicated the need of building a fireline to arrest the progress of future conflagrations. The necessity of clearing the Grove of its dense masses of inflammable undergrowth was also made apparent. This growth not only obstructed a view of the older trees, but it rendered them inaccessible for close inspection. It also made for poor reproduction by depriving seedlings of light. It choked and starved the younger trees, while it robbed the patriarchs of their much needed moisture and hindered their growth. Hence, to render these harmful features negligible, the Commissioners decided to clear the Grove of its underbrush. The appropriations of the next five years were used toward this end. By 1895, all the acreage within the ambit of the Big Tree Grant had been treated to the brush scythe and the grubbing hoe, and the fire menace reduced to a minimum.

No less worthy of attention are the extensive additions and improvements made during these years upon the roads. Each of the main clusters of Sequoias was rendered accessible and travelers could make a complete tour of the Grove viewing its principal wonder trees from the stage, as they do today. The State had received the Grant approachable only by trail. In an amazingly short time, considering the meagerness of appropriations, the State had rendered the Grove accessible to other than hardy travelers. Young and old, the physically fit and the infirm, could now enter it with comfort and safety. In all fairness it must be conceded that the State had made the Mariposa Grant more suitable for the particular use for which it had been appropriated. The Commissioners had administered the Grove for the good of the greatest number. They had taken positive steps to protect it from the carelessness of the thoughtless and the wantonness of the ignorant. Unquestionably, they had proved scrupulously careful in their administration of the trust imposed in them.

Yet even so commendable an accomplishment as this only aroused a storm of criticism. The removal of the fire-inviting underbrush shocked the nerves of sentimentalists who advocated the preservation of the Mariposa Grove “in the condition in which it won the admiration of its discoverer and appealed to the enthusiasm of the world.” They lamented over the fancied catastrophe. They fell into near convulsions over the thought that the virginal beauty of the Grove was no more, because its “flowering shrubs” had been grubbed out. Even the _Century Magazine_ took up the bodeful cry. Joaquin Miller’s statement that he had travelled from Babylon to Jerusalem “without seeing so much as a grasshopper, or a bird, or a blade of grass in a land that was once an Eden” was quoted as a prophecy of the Grove’s condition in the near future if these “destructive tendencies” continued. Alexander, they pointed out, mourned because Greek ivy would not grow on the tower of Babel and inferred that such would be California’s lot when her eyesight sufficiently improved to see the need of enhancing the grandeur of her Sequoias by garlands. And all the while they failed to see the irony of their plea. They did not know that sentiment, like ivy, can cling to a very flat surface.

Nor is this all that the Commissioners accomplished. To their list of achievements must be added yet another. In order to make the Grant of 1864 a treasure that “all shall share and none shall be the poorer for sharing,” they warred against unscrupulous commercial enterprises. Hawkers continually pressed forward their schemes in honeyed words to make travelers the victims of innumerable petty charges and vexations. However, the Commissioners who were all men of high principles would have none of them. Concessioners who proved unprincipled in their treatment of tourists were summarily deprived of the means with which to accrue further ill-gotten gains. In all truthfulness it can be stated that throughout the entire forty years of State control[1] the various Commissioners never sullied their hands in graft. Though they received not a penny in salary and often laid out considerable sums to swell the meager appropriations of the State Legislature, their office was never used for the purpose of gain. In short, they carried a trusteeship that concerned the high honor of the Commonwealth of California in a manner which justifies the pride of the people.

In all this glorious work Galen Clark, as Guardian, stands head and shoulders above his colleagues. He had that desire to serve without its selfish qualities. Not inspired by the love of fame and reputation, he did not toil for self-aggrandizement, like many men. He considered the interest of the people higher and purer than that of the individual. It was this interest that he ever held paramount, that he always best served. To him the highest patriotism was expressed by the man who thought not of honor of self or of individual reward, but who lost himself in the larger and dearer interests of the Commonwealth; who so loved it for its own sake that he was content to be forgotten. In this respect Galen Clark succeeded in a manner so striking that it deserves the name of art, not of artifice. He is practically unknown today. Yet he rendered the people of California, and even of America, a singular service.

“As Guardian he enjoyed a longer contact with the management of the Grant, off and on, than any other single individual. He was reappointed again and again by succeeding Governors as Guardian, and after twenty-four years of service in this capacity, he voluntarily retired, carrying with him the respect and admiration of every member of the Commission, of all the residents of the Valley, and of every visitor who enjoyed the pleasure of his personal acquaintance.”

The tribute paid him on his retirement in 1897 by those with whom he was so long officially associated is worthy of full quotation:

+Whereas+: Galen Clark has for a long number of years been closely
identified with Yosemite Valley and has for a considerable portion
of that time been its Guardian; and

+Whereas+: He has now, by his own choice and will, relinquished the
trust confided in him, and retired into private life; and

+Whereas+: His faithful and eminent services as Guardian, his
constant efforts to preserve, protect and enhance the beauties of
Yosemite; his dignified, kindly and courteous demeanor to all who
have come to see and enjoy its wonders, and his upright and noble
life, deserve from us a fitting recognition and memorial; now,
therefore, be it

+Resolved+: That the cordial assurance of the appreciation by this
Commission of the efforts and labors of +Galen Clark+, as Guardian
of Yosemite, in its behalf, be tendered and expressed to him:

That we recognize in him a faithful, efficient and worthy citizen
and officer of this Commission, and of the State; that he will be
followed into his retirement by the sincerest and best wishes of
this Commission individually, and as a body, for continued long
life and constant happiness.

Galen Clark did great things, but apparently fame accompanied him to the grave. Few know of him today. One of the most kindly of men, he had a simplicity so intense that at times it appeared ridiculous to men of sense and candor. Never offending by superiority, modesty composed the very fabric of his being. To be rather than to appear was the ruling passion of his long life. Having an insuperable aversion for bluster and bombast, he talked about himself rarely, and then only with the greatest of reticence. It was only after much persuasion on the part of friends that he was induced to write his charming and authoritative account of the _Indians of Yosemite_ in 1904. Doing nothing for the sake of personal display, he never forced himself into the limelight. Unobtrusive and unpretentious, he had all that unaffected humility that some believe to be the essence of Lincoln’s greatness.

No account of Galen Clark would be complete if it failed to touch on his love of Nature. “He was fond of scenery,” testifies John Muir, “and once told me that he liked ‘nothing in the world better than to climb to the top of a high ridge or mountain and look off.’ Oftentimes he would take his rifle, a few pounds of bacon, a little flour and a single blanket and go off hunting, for no other reason than to explore and get acquainted with the most beautiful points of view. On these trips he was always alone and indulged in the tranquil enjoyment of Nature to his heart’s content.”

Few, indeed, have been more sincere in their love of Nature. He loved not only all her moods, both beauteous and terrible, but all her forms from the lowliest flower in the dust by the roadside to the loftiest of Yosemite’s cloud-caressed cliffs. But he lacked the power of expressing his affections. Like Muir, he “read the great book spread out before him;” unlike Muir, he was not gifted with a magic pen. Probably he was too sensitive to his poverty of language to attempt to describe the fairy-like beauty, the rare delicacy, and the wondrous tints of an Alpine blossom—“that beautiful creature that catches the smile of God from out the sky and preserves it.”

Twenty summers in the Yosemite formed in Galen Clark an attachment for the Valley that was deep and lasting. Nearing the sunset of his life, like the patriarchs of old, he dug his own grave in the little cemetery near Yosemite Falls. With his hands he hewed his own tombstone from one of the granite blocks the elements had plucked from the cliff over which the snowy flood of the grand Yosemite Falls descend sonorous, and soft, and slow. Taking up a few seedling Sequoias from the Mariposa Grove, he transplanted them at the four corners of his last resting place so that they would shade the grave of their blessed benefactor in the years to come. A man of great age, he must have brooded on death and become familiar with its mystery so that the end did not come as a surprise.

One day in 1910, at the age of ninety-six, the end came and in sorrow and in silence all that was mortal of Galen Clark was laid in the sacred earth, his kindly soul passing on to where, beyond the booming voice of the great fall he so loved, there is peace.

+Chapter IV+

WONDER TREES

The Mariposa Grove belongs in the category of the world’s impressive wonders. It presents the most remarkable exhibition of the Sequoias growing between the American and the Kings Rivers and displays Nature’s finest handiwork on the fraternity of the king of all trees. It contains the essence of the most imposing qualities of the Sequoia and is unlike any other grove in its very compactness. Concentrated in its small extent are trees in every phase of development from nurseries of tender seedlings obtaining their feeble hold on life and groups of graceful saplings not half arrived at the maturity of treehood, and just disclosing their impatience to be kings, to venerable patriarchs that are numbered foremost in the world of living things—giants so freighted with age that they exemplify Doctor Johnson’s famous metaphor, “and panting Time toiled after him in vain.”

The Mariposa Grove is superior to other Sequoian tracts in its accessibility, lying as it does in a shallow, crater-like depression near the top of a forested ridge at an elevation of 6,000 feet above the sea and a distance of sixteen miles as the crow flies from the Village in Yosemite Valley. This ridge, upon which the Grove is situated, runs in an easterly direction between Big Creek and the South Fork of the Merced, having as its culmination Mt. Raymond, a rocky promontory upon which the snow lingers even in July.

The Grove is approachable over the Wawona Road which winds upward along the south rim of Yosemite Valley. After passing southward in a meandering course through twenty-seven miles of Park forest, the road drops to Wawona from where it again ascends 1,500 feet within eight miles before reaching the portals of the Mariposa Grove. Once within the Grove, but a comparatively brief period of time is required in which to review its salient features. With little effort it may be completely explored and studied. So harmoniously are its wonder trees disposed within the utmost smallest space that all of them may be viewed from a passing vehicle. In fact, even the most cursory journey through the Mariposa Grove will suffice to give an impression of the singular, solemn dignity of the Sequoia.

Possibly much of the world-wide fame of this Grove is due to the fact that it has been brought the nearest to civilization of the several Big Tree groves. Yet interest in it should not spring merely from such a consideration, for it lies in happy proximity to the grandeur of Yosemite’s cliffs and domes. Indeed, it is as distinctive a feature of Yosemite National Park as the Valley itself. Time was when the importance of the Mariposa Grove was little if at all recognized. In the last decades of the nineteenth century the Calaveras Grove held the center of the stage. The latter was then the most accessible. Because of this it became the Mecca of naturalists and celebrities of the day who made pilgrimages across the continent in order to visit it. Therefore, the Calaveras giants loom large in the earlier literature of the Sequoia. But with the passing of the stagecoach and the hitching post—with the coming of the “winged wheels” and the “iron horse,” the Mariposa Grove ceased to bloom unseen. Instead of the Calaveras Grove it became the more easily reached. Inevitably the pendulum of popularity swung toward it and yearly the tide of travel that flows its way increases.

The tendency to wander into the wilderness that obtains in these feverish times is advancing the popularity of the Mariposa Grove. Mankind is coming more and more into sympathetic contact with Nature. Yearly thousands of over-civilized people are discovering that nothing so renews the health of the body, so refines the mind, so affords a margin of leisure for the soul, or so has the power to quiet the “restless pulse of care” as communion with Nature. They are discovering that real recreation and enjoyment are not found in crowded cities or fashion-hampered hotels. As a result, unspoiled woods and mountain solitudes, brawling brooks and soundless lakes, flowers and stars, rosy dawns, sunset golds and twilight purples are fast becoming the wealth of nations. All this is glorious and full of promise. It lends a happy tone to the times. Truly, if it persists in increasing, the Mariposa Grove is destined to enjoy a tremendous tomorrow.

The Grant made by Congress in 1864 really embraced two distinct groups of the Giant Sequoia. Because these approach within but a few yards of each other, they have come to be looked upon as a single body. The Upper Grove, according to Whitney, contains 365 trees of a diameter of one foot and over. This makes, as the old guide books were wont to point out, “a tree for every day in the year.” The Lower Grove is smaller in area and contains but 182 trees, which are more scattered than those of the Upper Grove. In both groves there are hardly more than 125 Sequoias over 40 feet in circumference, yet these in themselves are so imposing that to view them is compensation for a journey half the circuit of the globe.

The road enters the Lower Grove, describing a figure eight in passing through it and the Upper Grove. The Sergeant of the Guard and the Four Sentinels guard the gateway. Their bright color and port, rather than their size, at once attract the eye. Soon other monarchs, among them the prostrate Father of the Forest, are passed. Then the Grizzly Giant, standing alone in the grandeur of its own solitude, chains the attention. Upward wanders the road, passing from one marvel to another. Each seems to surpass its predecessor, and finally, when the road passes through the Wawona Tree, it seems the chief wonder of them all. But when this Highway of the Giants winds back again to the Log Cabin, the traveller learns that the real wonder has been reserved for the last. Here he will find himself in the midst of a most magnificent grouping of Sequoias. Over half a hundred are within sight of the Cabin. But not until, after examining one after another, letting the eye roam over their fluted columns and upward into the blue-green depths of their far-away tops, walking around some and into the enormous hollows of others, climbing up the sides of still other prostrate trunks and stepping them off from end to end, will a proper realization of the immensity of the Sequoia be possible.

The more remarkable trees of the Mariposa Grove have received names to individualize them. But even this practice of late has been carried too far. The names of states, cities, and persons have been indiscriminately tacked to trees that were on earth when the stones of Rome were laid. That such comparatively trivial and frivolous designations so inconsistent with the grandeur and nobility of the Sequoia should be permitted is amazing and regrettable. It detracts seriously from the finer appreciation of the tree and renders its groves “freak museums” which are looked upon with a “Barnum eye” as merely “side-show curiosities and big things.” Assuredly, such a practice is to be unreservedly condemned.

Whitney attempted to avoid just such a result as this by distinguishing the greater Sequoias by numerals. However, the undesirability of such a method is at once apparent when pressed into service. Such featureless monotony as “Number 15, fine, sound tree; Number 304, largest and oldest tree in the Grove; Number 262, half-burned at the base,” and the like (as Whitney recites in his _Yosemite Guide Book_) is produced. Obviously, the trees must be individualized by names. But why attach a name such as Andy Johnson to a tree that saw the light of day when Pompeii was destroyed? Affixing names of such temporary notable figures of the day to a Sequoia savors almost of ticketing the name for an “adventitious immortality.” At any rate, whether it be the tree or the man so honored, probably either would live as long in memory without the connection. If a Sequoia must be labeled, let some striking attribute of the tree itself be the governing factor in selecting the designation.

Foremost of the Sequoias in the Mariposa Grove is the Grizzly Giant. It is among the most massive-stemmed trees of the world and ranks with the oldest inhabitants of the earth. Yet a mere statement of its size little serves to convey an adequate impression of the tree. Measurements are, after all, only relative criteria, at best. As well give the tailor’s measurements of Lincoln as an index of his greatness as to try to convey the fascinating immensity of this tree by saying that it is 204 feet high and 31 feet in diameter at the ground. Its stockiness is truly remarkable. Its sturdy trunk tapers upward so slightly to the first great limb—reputed to be six feet in diameter; the size of a mature pine—that the diametric variance is almost imperceptible. Nor is its base excessively expanded. No more, really, than is necessary for strength. In fact, it seems almost too slight an expansion to serve as a diagonal brace or instep for the support of such a gigantic structure upon the earth. Consequently, the diametric measurement of the Grizzly Giant at the ground justly signifies its enormous bulk. Yet even this cannot be accurately obtained for its base has been so badly gnawed by flames that a true measurement is not possible.

MARIPOSA GROVE Photo by H. S. Hoyt]

Several Sequoias press closely upon the Grizzly Giant in girth. The Lafayette Tree is easily its counterpart, having a ground diameter of 29.4 feet. But in this case the swell at the base is excessive and the trunk itself has less than two-thirds the diameter of the Grizzly Giant. The Columbia Tree even exceeded the Grizzly Giant in girth and must have measured at least 110 feet in circumference before fire claimed half its base. Viewed from the Cabin it is extremely imposing and almost as grand and picturesque in its old age as the Grizzly Giant. Standing on a steep slope, its stem appears to be fully as massive as that of the patriarch of the Grove, while its great elbowed limbs and its high top, “bald with dry antiquity” and scarred with tokens of old wars, vest it with a venerable charm. However, a scramble through the dense brush on the up-hill side reveals a large burnt hollow in which a dozen persons could comfortably stand. If sawed close to the ground its stump would be shaped like a crescent moon. A tape stretched around it and across its concave surface would record a diameter of 25.6 feet. The Washington Tree is a foot less in girth at the ground than the Grizzly Giant, yet measured 10 feet above the ground its trunk is a few inches larger in diameter, being 20.7 feet. Nevertheless, it tapers far more and is not nearly so imposing in its pillar-like stateliness as the tree that presides over the Mariposa Grove.

After all, mere figures have their limitations. They are not expressive of Sequoian size. This may be due to the columnar character of the Sequoia’s trunk. It rises smooth and unbroken by protuberance of any kind for a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet. Vastness is so artfully given emphasis and completeness that the whole is not a monstrosity. Symmetry is so perfectly achieved that there is no straining for enormity. What would be a commanding height for a building on a flat level surface appears not out of the ordinary in the Sequoia. This is perhaps why a first glimpse of the Sequoia is sometimes disappointing. Examination and meditation are necessary before the grandeur of the tree “grows” upon the observer. Then he is filled with a feeling of awe that no grandeur of architectural pile could possibly inspire.

The Mariposa Grove possesses the tallest of the Sierra Sequoias, the Mark Twain Tree. This magnificent specimen lifts its proud head 331 feet into the sky. Thus, it would reach nearly two-thirds of the way up the lofty Washington Monument and would over-top the dome of the Nation’s Capitol. Yet those who gaze upon it for the first time depart doubting. Seeing is not believing. Its appearance is anything but that of the tallest Giant Sequoia on the globe. Nevertheless, the measurement is accurate and authentic and must stand.[2]

Other Sequoias rank close seconds to the Mark Twain Tree in height. The Captain A. E. Wood, with a height of 310 feet, is not far behind. The Columbia, 294 feet high, the Nevada, 287 feet, and the Georgia, 270 feet, are all exceptional trees. In fact, a score of others could be enumerated before the imperial Queen of the Forest would be reached, whose 219 feet of trunkage place it within the average height of the Giant Sequoia.

Most perfectly formed of the Sequoias of the Grove is the Alabama Tree. The pioneers called it the “Pillar of the Temple.” It has developed under full sunlight and is magnificently balanced in all its proportions. Truly, it is one of the finest examples of “Nature’s forest masterpieces,” as John Muir was wont to designate the Sequoia. Fit to support any temple, it stands marvelously perfect, unmarred by fire, untouched by disease, undisturbed by the violence of the elements. Centuries have passed over it, centuries that have noted many disasters in the march of civilization, and yet it has remained free from accident. Its heroic stem is as roundly perfect and as regularly tapered as though turned in a lathe. Unbroken by a limb upwards of nearly two hundred feet, with an instep that adjusts itself to the mass it supports with elegant finish, it discloses a trunk with deeply and widely furrowed ridges not unlike a pillar that Phidias might have fashioned. But no pillar ever conceived by man bore a tint more ravishing or a luster more superb than this. When spotted with shifting patches of golden sunlight, its cinnamon-reddish trunk would put to shame the richest colorings of Numidian marble.

Nor has any pillar of stone ever supported a more exquisite structure than the crown of this Sequoia. Possessed of almost an artificial finish, it is a gracefully trimmed, singularly perfect dome. The supports of this crown leave the trunk in a woody wilderness of huge arms, wild in ungovernable expression, knotted and confused as those of giants who toss their arms in anguish. These great limbs, regal-hued in rose and purple, dissolve themselves abruptly into masses of stumpy branchlets which in turn spray out into a soft film of deep blue-green foliage. Indeed, it is impossible to distinguish against the skyline exactly where this arch described by the foliage ends and where sky begins. So subtile are the edges of this crown that they appear to melt away into the heavens. Yet more wonderful is the flame-like semi-halo visible along the crest of this tree just after a rain. Ruskin noticed this light on pine trees. “The whole outer crown,” he states, “becomes a thing of light, dazzling as the sun itself, for every minutest needle is bedewed and carries a diamond, as if living among the clouds it had caught a part of their glory.”

Never has Nature presented a more striking contrast, a more extraordinary comparison than in the trunk and foliage of the Sequoia. They are at the opposite ends of the scale. One presents the utmost massiveness of outline; the other the most delicate curvature and grace. The trunk has qualities of permanence, classic mightiness, enduring power, and the colossal dimensions that go with two thousand years of age; the foliage possesses qualities of fleetness, ephemeral frailty, fragile beauty, and the airy nothingness of a dream.

Nearly all the other Sequoias of the Grove have had their perfection marred by three agents of destruction—time, fire, and man. The remarkable manner in which they have triumphed over their destroyers makes them unique among trees. Seared, scarred, and mutilated all their lives, they have carried on in their great, patient, rugged fashion. Accidents seem unable to disturb more than momentarily their peaceful way. Calamities that would vanquish other trees only serve to quicken their hardy, tenacious growth. Almost invincible, they appear to know neither despair nor defeat. Even when overthrown by the combined strength of the elements of heaven and earth, though uprooted and prostrate, they refuse to perish utterly. Would that man had the stamina of the Sequoia.

Time has not laid a heavy hand on the Sequoia. On all living things it leaves its trace. But never within the compass of human reckoning has time alone been able to take off a Sequoia. Fire must first prepare the way by eating through the center of gravity of its trunk. Then, and only then, are the tempests able to overthrow it. This is because the scanty foliage of the tree never makes for top-heaviness. One of the most interesting habits of the Sequoia is the pruning of its own top. Unnecessary limbs are rarely retained. Not infrequently in Sequoian groves when there is neither wind nor other apparent cause, a crash in the night is heard and at dawn the ruins of a limb are found beneath one of the Giants. Evidently the Sequoia knows that a tree which carries its crown two hundred and fifty feet above its base cannot wrestle with the fury of the winds under full sail. Consequently, it is only after fire has deflected one of these columns from its plumbline and when the mass of earth about its roots has been softened by rain or snow, that the gales succeed in prostrating the Sequoia.

The Fallen Monarch and the Fallen Giant are the two most noted of this category in the Mariposa Grove. The former, when standing in the full glory of prime, must have been the equal of the largest of the lordly monarchs of today. Its bark gone, its sap-wood decayed, its base badly fire-scarred, it still measures over 85 feet in circumference. But for all its great size, its refusal to perish is even more wonderful. It is not a mouldering mass which tourists can idly kick about, but a solid trunk whose wood is as firm and sound as on the day the tree fell to earth. How long the bleached ruin of a tree may have lain on the forest floor is mere conjecture. How old this monarch was before its fall is an equally fascinating speculation. It may be that the circling sun looked down upon it as a graceful sapling when Cheops raised the Pyramids on the plains of Gizeh. Nor are these vast, unmeaning, sepulchral piles erected to the great who exhausted the splendor of Egypt in their building, apparently more enduring than this decumbent monarch.