principal access to Sequoia for the next few decades.
Creation of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks
While the Kaweah colonists were busy with the construction of their road, political winds had shifted unfavorably in Washington, DC, as a more development-friendly Department of Interior assumed power. In 1889, the General Land Office reopened for private sale several townships west of Mineral King, which alarmed George W. Stewart and others sympathetic toward preserving this area. The tract offered for sale included Garfield Grove, one of the finest giant sequoia groves in the southern Sierra, along with expansive Hockett Meadows. In response to this threat, Stewart vigorously courted public opinion and successfully maneuvered through political channels to pass a bill on September 25, 1890, setting aside 76 square miles of Sierra forest as a public park.
Mystery shrouds the next step in the process of setting aside Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Unbeknownst to Stewart and his associates, another bill came before Congress a mere six days after passage of the bill for Sequoia, establishing Yosemite as a national park. Attached to the Yosemite measure was the addition of five townships to Sequoia, including the area around the Giant Forest and four sections surrounding Grant Grove. No one knows for certain who was behind the bill’s additions, or how the size increased by more than five hundred percent from the original proposal. However, on October 1, 1890, Yosemite and General Grant National Parks were born and Sequoia National Park was greatly enlarged. Speculation points toward Daniel K. Zumwalt, a Southern Pacific Railroad agent, as the man behind the bill, but his motivation remains unclear.
Management of the new parks became problematic quite quickly. By the following spring, Captain Joseph H. Dorst and the Fourth Cavalry had the unenviable task of protection, although the mission for the new national parks was ill defined. They spent most of that first summer dealing with the Kaweah colonists, who had rather unjustly been denied their claims in the Giant Forest. A small contingent of the colonists resurfaced near Mineral King to log sequoias for the leased Atwell Mill. The government initially took issue with the project, harassing the colonists for much of the summer, but eventually acquiescing after determining the mill was located on private land and was a perfectly legal operation. However, the colonists proved to be inexperienced and failed to turn a profit. By the time the lease came up for renewal the following year, the colony had disbanded. During the remainder of the summer and into autumn, Dorst and his men explored the parks, dealing with problems of logging, grazing, and squatting.
Stewart, Muir, and others continued their push to place more lands under federal protection. As a result, in 1893, President William Henry Harrison signed a presidential proclamation creating the Sierra Forest Reserve, which removed most of the central and southern Sierra from private sale. The preserve was reclassified as Sequoia National Forest in 1905, placing the area under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture, which was more concerned with resource management than preservation. During the first part of the 20th century, the idea of a large national park for the southern Sierra still had life, but very little progress was made toward that goal.
Unnamed tarn in Dusy Basin (Trip 113)
The military continued their minimally successful attempt at protecting the parks until 1914, when Walter Fry became the first civilian superintendent of General Grant and Sequoia National Parks. By then the Colony Mill Road had been extended into the Giant Forest. Also, the Mt. Whitney Power Company had constructed several hydroelectric power plants on branches of the Kaweah River. Aside from these improvements, most of the area was still virtually untouched by any form of development. Ongoing cattle grazing, private inholdings, lack of access, and poor facilities plagued Fry’s administration.
The Reign of the National Park Service
In 1916 Congress created the National Park Service, with Californian Stephen T. Mather appointed as the first director. Mather was quite familiar with the Sequoia region, having organized an expedition of notable persons to traverse the range in 1915. Armed with firsthand knowledge, along with a Park Service mandate for conservation and enjoyment of the parks, Mather ushered in a new era of park management.
Mather was given two mandates for Sequoia—acquisition of private lands inside the park and expansion of the park’s boundary to include the High Sierra and Kings Canyon. Acquiring private inholdings was a fairly easy proposition compared to park enlargement, which drew staunch opposition from nearly every quarter, including ranchers, hunters, and Mineral King property owners. Additional opponents included the Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light and San Joaquin Light and Power Company, which hoped to build hydroelectric dams at Cedar Grove and Tehipite Valley. Even the Forest Service joined the opposition, reluctant to give up lands currently under its control with mineral, timber, and grazing potential. A scaled-down proposal to expand the park was passed in 1926, incorporating lands east over the Sierra Crest, but omitting Mineral King and Kings Canyon.
The Generals Highway, from Ash Mountain to the Giant Forest, opened in 1926, replacing the old Colony Mill Road. Nine years later the road was extended to Grant Grove. Easier access, combined with America’s growing fascination with the private automobile, led to a dramatic rise in park visitation, which in turn sparked a need for new and expanded facilities. In addition to improving roads and utilities, an extensive network of trails was built (including sections of the John Muir and High Sierra Trails), campgrounds were improved, a number of government and public structures were erected, and a concession monopoly was granted. Completion of a road from Grant Grove to Kings Canyon accelerated development of campgrounds along the South Fork Kings River, but more significant projects were put on hold until the question of hydroelectric dams was settled.
Initially, the park improvements seemed to be a good and necessary way to accommodate the growing number of visitors. However, as both visitation and development continued to increase, ills such as traffic jams, congestion, and overcrowding began to characterize the Giant Forest and, to a slightly lesser extent, Grant Grove. Environmental concerns created by a meteoric rise in tourists and rampant development provided a real threat to the long-term health of the park, particularly the sequoia groves.
Additional management concerns surfaced with threats to vegetation and wildlife. Fire suppression was the rule of the day, allowing a dangerous buildup of fuels that could produce potentially disastrous forest fires. The previous ban on stock grazing was lifted, throwing open the door to severe environmental damage to meadows and other vegetation. Wildlife management suffered similar setbacks. The last grizzly bear in California was shot during the 1920s near Horse Corral Meadow. Increased conflicts between humans and black bears put “problem” bears at risk. The evening garbage feast at Bear Hill (Sequoia’s garbage dump), where marauding bears put on a show for tourists, was emblematic of the times.
Two Eagle Peak and Fifth Lake, Big Pine Lakes (Trip 111)
A philosophical shift occurred when Colonel John R. White became park superintendent from 1920 to 1938 and 1941 to 1947. He made visible efforts to reduce the effects of excessive visitation at the Giant Forest, placing limits on future development and moving many of the government facilities to other areas of the park. Unfortunately, he had little impact on limiting the number of concessionaires. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was in defeating several proposed roads into the Sequoia backcountry, including two trans-Sierra links, one from Cedar Grove to Independence, and another between Porterville and Lone Pine. Colonel White also squelched the notion of the Sierra Way, a mountain highway that would have connected Yosemite and Sequoia, with a link between the Giant Forest and Mineral King through Redwood Meadow.
The Creation of Kings
