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Years ago, some people in the then nascent United States thought redwoods were fictional, a flora that existed only in fantasy.
Then came a chance encounter during the California Gold Rush, followed by bark sent across the country for exhibition and extensive writing and art to help convince nonbelievers that the massive trees were real—and that their protection should be codified.
The redwoods, which are hundreds of feet tall and live for thousands of years, have been a national landmark for more than a century. But now a fire threatens more than 500 giant sequoias as it encircles Yosemite National Park’s Mariposa Grove.
Home to the famous ‘Grizzly Giant’, the grove is the largest in the park. During a community meeting Monday, Yosemite Superintendent Cicely Muldoon called Mariposa Grove “the root of the entire national park system.”
It closed July 7 after visitors reported seeing smoke near the park’s Washburn Trail.
The Washburn fire is the latest in a series of wildfires in the western United States as climate change has made it easier for them to burn longer and hotter.
Last year, the KNP complex and the Windy Fire in the Sierra Nevada killed or burned thousands of giant sequoias so severely that they are expected to die in the coming years, according to the National Park Service (NPS). Sequoias that have survived humanity and thunderstorms are once again vulnerable as the Washburn Fire continues to burn.
“Our visitors come from all over the world to see a magical icon like the redwood that we thought was somewhat untouchable,” said Sharon Miyako, acting chief of Yosemite’s interpretive field operations branch.
Last week, firefighters set up sprinklers around the Grizzly Giant and Mariposa Grove Cabin, built more than 100 years ago by Galen Clark, an advocate and promoter of the grove who was appointed Yosemite’s first ranger.
But Native American tribes in the area noticed redwoods long before Clark and other white people.
There are seven Native American tribes with ancestral ties to Yosemite that have been caretakers of Mariposa Grove since before the oldest redwoods took root there, Miyako said.
“Tribals continue to play an ongoing role in the use, management and protection of the grove,” she said.
Clark first saw Mariposa Grove in 1855 when he traveled to California as part of a touring party.
Although there are some reports of white people spotting redwoods as early as 1833, the gold rush that began in 1848 was the impetus for further discoveries, said Daegan Miller, historian and author of This Radical Land : a natural history of America Dissent.
In the early 1850s, Augustus Dowd, a trapper who helped feed prospectors, was chasing a grizzly bear when he came across redwoods in what is now Calaveras North Grove. At first, people did not believe that the trees he saw could really be as tall as he observed.
“All early accounts of the great size of the trees were thought to be exaggerated, and when tens of feet were discussed, the listener thought he meant inches,” wrote Lawrence Cook, then the NPS’s superintendent of forestry, in a 1955 book, The Giant . California redwoods.
Attempts to prove the existence of redwoods have led to calls for their preservation and the chance for people around the world to admire them.
The tallest tree found by Dowd, called the Tree of Discovery, was cut down and its bark sent to New York for exhibition. But the settlers to the east were not convinced.
The stump of the Discovery Tree, which was used as a dance floor at the time, can be seen today at Calaveras Big Trees State Park. As news of California’s big trees continued, the bark of a different redwood was stripped and sent to another exhibit in New York, this one titled “Vegetable Wonders of the Golden Regions.”
Known as the “Mother of the Forest,” the tree has attracted enormous attention—as well as public outcry that it was destroyed for display, contributing to efforts to preserve California’s redwoods.
“It was like hard physical evidence that these things exist,” Miller said. “So we got evidence, but then people said, ‘Oh my God, why are we cutting this stuff?'”
In the years that followed, many white people became involved in conservation, including Clark.
The National Park Service states, “Within five years, Clark rose to a critical role in the development of what would eventually become Yosemite National Park.”
In 1864 – decades before Yosemite National Park and the National Park Service were established – President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill giving Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to the state of California “for public use, resort and recreation.”
The grove became known as a destination for tourists, conservationists, artists and photographers. The Grizzly Giant especially inspired the awe of many – including Theodore Roosevelt, who camped under the tree in 1903.
“During that time he formed a lot of his ideas to give us some of the more conservation-oriented laws that he introduced,” said John Woolman, an NPS park ranger interpreter stationed in Yosemite.
Ullman, who has worked at the park since 2009, said that even among the other giant sequoias in Mariposa Grove, the Grizzly Giant stands out.
Estimated to be around 3,000 years old, the tree is 209 feet tall, with branches upwards of six feet in diameter. It is the second largest tree in Yosemite.
“The character it exudes is so different from any other tree I’ve actually seen,” Woolman said. “It’s its own entity.”
For decades, rangers like Woolman and Miyako have led tour groups through the grove, visitors craning their necks in search of the treetops.
During the tours, the rangers’ stories always had a common theme when it came to redwoods and fire – resilience. Miyako said they will talk about how fire actually helps trees release seeds more easily, how they have survived many flash fires over thousands of years.
But those stories now include a more sobering fact — last year, wildfires killed nearly a fifth of the world’s redwoods, according to some estimates. They began to question this resilience, something Miyako never thought would happen.
“When I started here, the idea of seeing redwoods threatened, the idea that we’re going to tell people we’re closing the grove to a fire and we’re going to have to put in some protection for the redwoods, that was unthinkable,” she said. “And now it’s become something we see every year.”
And the driving force behind these heightened threats? people. It’s a point Woolman tries to make on every tour he does now.
“Decisions we make miles, sometimes hundreds, thousands of miles away from these magnificent trees end up affecting them,” he said.
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