The Fresno grove, the Tuolumne, Merced and Mariposa groves are
under the protection of the Federal Government in the Yosemite National
Park. So are the General Grant and Sequoia National Parks; the latter,
established twenty-one years ago, has an area of 240 square miles and is
efficiently guarded by a troop of cavalry under the direction of the
Secretary of the Interior; so also are the small General Grant National
Park, estatblished at the same time with an area of four square miles,
and the Mariposa grove, about the same size and the small Merced and
Tuolumne group. Perhaps more than half of all the big trees have been
thoughtlessly sold and are now in the hands of speculators and mill men.
It appears, therefore, that far the largest and important section of
protected big trees is in the great Sequoia National Park, now easily
accessible by rail to Lemon Cove and thence by a good stage road into
the giant forest of the Kaweah and thence by rail to other parts of the
park; but large as it is it should be made much larger. Its natural
eastern boundary is the High Sierra and the northern and southern
boundaries are the Kings and Kern Rivers. Thus could be included
the sublime scenery on the headwaters of these rivers and perhaps
nine-tenths of all the big trees in existence.
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