3-071-019 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The "Grizzly Giant" of Mariposa, California, 1881. 'Among the natural wonders of California, which may be visited by the tourist in a few days' excursion, eastward from Stockton, on the San Joaquin, to the Yosemite Valley and neighbouring regions, are the Big Tree Groves of Mariposa and Calaveras. The Mariposa Grove, situated within less than twenty miles of the Yosemite, at an elevation of 5500 ft., contains several hundred large specimens of the famous Wellingtonia, or Sequoia Gigantea, a tree which was much talked of in Europe at the time when its dimensions were shown by the bark of one of the trunks set up in our Crystal Palace at Sydenham. Some of these trees attain the height of from 250 ft. to 270 ft., or even 300 ft., while the circumference of the trunk, measured at the ground, is eighty or ninety feet. We give an Illustration of the tree called "The Grizzly Giant," which is one of conspicuous growth at Mariposa; but several of the largest have been destroyed, or much damaged, by accidental fires. The Calaveras Grove, some distance north of Yosemite, has several trees which are even taller than those of Mariposa...It is calculated by scientific botanists that these trees are more than a thousand years old'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.