Yosemite Hikes Home
» Not Quite Yosemite
» Nelder Grove of Giant Sequoias
» Ghosts in the Grove
Ghosts in the Grove
If you ever wonder what the difference is between you and a 19th-century lumberjack, consider what you would do the first time you chopped down a giant sequoia in Nelder Grove and counted the rings and discovered that it was over a thousand years old. I'm just guessing because I don't know you, but probably: feel some remorse, flee before you get arrested, and give up meth, because why were you cutting down a thousand-year-old sequoia to begin with?
If you were a late-19th-century lumberjack (or early-20th-century one), though, you would proceed to cut down another 250 of them.[1] Granted, most of them would be smaller than eight feet in diameter[2] - roughly big enough to fit your bed inside, if the tree weren't already full of tree - but the toll included several more mature sequoias, too. You can see the evidence scattered throughout the grove, including a pair of decapitated giants right next to the Bull Buck Tree (see below). The Nelder Grove is still an impressive place, but you can't help wondering what might have been.
Stumps Accompanying the Bull Buck Tree