On October 1,1890, Congress established two new national parks – Yosemite and General Grant. The much smaller General Grant National Park was four square miles on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada about 64 miles due east of Fresno, California. The park was established for the purpose of protecting two groves of giant sequoia trees from logging. These were the North Grove and Grant Grove, which contained the General Grant Tree, the second largest giant sequoia and the second largest living thing on earth.
The General Grant Tree, approximately 1,650 years old, is 267 feet tall and almost 29 feet in diameter. Think about this – a tree that is the equivalent of a 27-story building with the base width equivalent to the length of a typical school bus. These statistics alone don’t adequately present the full impact of the size of this tree. You need to stand beside it to fully appreciate its amazing presence.
National Park designation was successful in protecting the General Grant Tree and the other giant sequoias in the two groves while other sequoia groves continued to be logged. Today, you won’t find a General Grant National Park because it doesn’t exist. In 1940, the park was abolished and the Grant Grove area became part of the newly established Kings Canyon National Park. Whether Grant Grove National Park or the Grant Grove area of Kings Canyon National Park, the result is the same – protection of the Big Trees. Both giant sequoias and Kings Canyon National Park will be future blog posts.
As a young ranger, I was fortunate enough to work in Kings Canyon National Park for two years. My family and I lived at Cedar Grove in the bottom of Kings Canyon in the summer and at Grant Grove in the winter. It was a magical place to live and work, beautiful and inspiring surroundings, great people to work with, an old-line traditional park, and one of my favorite assignments.
At Grant Grove we lived in a four-room cabin known as the Old Chief Ranger’s Residence, the oldest house at Grant Grove. Portions of it were built in the 1890s and it was remodeled and added on in 1923. It was a good example of the “luxurious” quarters provided for employees at the time. It was heated by a stone wood burning fireplace and a propane stove. There was no insulation in the walls. There were gaps in the ceiling and blobs of some unknown material would occasionally fall into the room. The windows were not thermal pane and they were covered with clear plastic in an attempt to keep out the cold. On a few occasions we had a squirrel running through the house and hiding inside our couch. It was basic living at its finest, but we were content with it. The cabin while we were living in it is shown below.
About once a month we drove down the winding mountain road to do our food and other shopping. It was a long day for us, especially for our two young children. On one occasion we had returned from a long day of shopping while it was dark. We parked the car in front of our cabin and my wife and I carried our two sleeping little ones into the house. I returned to the car and started bringing bags of groceries into the cabin leaving the back hatch of our station wagon open. As I approached the car on my second trip, I noticed a movement in the car. There were two eyes shining back at me. It was a raccoon sitting in the back of our car. He had ripped open a bag of potato chips and was stuffing chips into his mouth. Seeing me, he jumped out of the car and ran away dragging the bag of chips. I couldn’t help but laugh even though I had a mess to clean up. I felt some guilt for feeding wildlife but it wasn’t intentional.
I can close my eyes and let my mind take me back to our time in Grant Grove. I can still smell the scent of the conifer forest. I can feel the insignificance and reverence that I felt while walking among the giant sequoias. I remember standing on the front porch of our cabin at night with the falling snow illuminated by the lights of the visitor center parking lot, just below our cabin. I remember snowshoeing to work at the visitor center and learning to cross country ski. Sometimes the snow was so deep that I could snowshoe onto the roof of our cabin. I remember cutting openings in the snowbanks that completely covered our windows so we could get natural light into the cabin. Living at Grant Grove was a simpler time and a wonderful and unique experience for our family. I feel very privileged to have lived and worked there. I only wish we could do it all over again.