OTHER PEOPLE'S SEQUOIAS

T was to preserve these trees from destruction that Congress created the national park in 1890; and yet, with the one exception of the General Sherman Tree, the greatest trees and all the finest groups of greater trees in the Giant Forest, the grove of largest trees, are not the property of the nation but of individuals. The park was created out of public lands without provision for acquiring the private holdings that happened to lie within its boundaries.

What the park's creation, therefore, has done for most of the oldest and largest sequoias is merely to make it unprofitable to cut and market them.

But owners cannot be expected to forego profit when, with the park's inevitably increasing popularity, these holdings acquire earning ability. Once visitors begin to throng the park, no law can prevent the fencing of these Big Tree clumps for the charging of admissions; nor can the public welfare control the kind and appearance of the hostelries which some day surely will be built beneath some of our greatest sequoias, nor even stop the raising of spiral stairways round their great trunks to lookouts and lunch platforms among their branches.

The time has come for public-spirited citizens to combine subscriptions to save them, under the provision of the Sundry Civil Act of March 3, 1915 (38 U. S. Stat. 863), which authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to accept patented land or other right of way whether over patented or other land in the Sequoia National Park that may be donated for park purposes.

"DEEP IN THE WOODY WILDERNESS" Photograph by George F. Belden

VISTAS OF THE GIANT FOREST Many of these trees were growing thriftily when Christ was born Photograph by Lindley Eddy

ALTA PEAK FROM MORO ROCK Photograph by Lindley Eddy

ALTA MEADOWS NEAR THE GIANT FOREST Photograph by H. C. Tibbitts

SUNSET FROM THE RIM OF MARBLE FORK CANYON Photograph by Lindley Eddy

THE SIERRA CLUB IN CAMP Photograph by C. H. Hamilton

THE CELEBRATED KINGS RIVER CANYON Photograph by H. C. Tibbitts

KAWEAH PEAKS NEAR THE CANYON OF THE KERN Photograph by H. C. Tibbitts

MIDDLE FORK OF THE KINGS RIVER Photograph by H. C. Tibbitts

UNIVERSITY PEAK FROM KEARSARGE PASS Photograph by H. C. Tibbitts

THE FALLEN GIANT This trunk measures 288 feet. Sequoia wood is almost indestructible by fire. This tree may have been prostrate for many centuries Photograph by Lindley Eddy