Converse Basin Grove

Converse Basin Grove
A steam donkey crew at the Boole Tree, 1894.
Converse Basin Grove is located in California
Converse Basin Grove
Location within California
Geography
LocationFresno County, California, United States
Coordinates36°48′00″N 118°58′00″W / 36.8°N 118.966667°W / 36.8; -118.966667
Elevation5,900–6,600 ft (1,800–2,000 m)
Area
4,666 acres (18.88 km2)
Ecology
Dominant tree species
Sequoiadendron giganteum

Converse Basin Grove is a grove of giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) trees in the Giant Sequoia National Monument in the Sierra Nevada, in Fresno County, California, 5 miles (8 km) north of General Grant Grove, just outside Kings Canyon National Park. Once home to one of the largest populations of giant sequoias in the world, and covering 4,600 acres (19 km2),: 138  the grove was overlogged by the Sanger Lumber Company at the turn of the 20th century. The logging of an estimated 8,000 giant sequoias, many of which were over 2,000 years old, removed most of the grove's mature giant sequoias and sharply altered its old-growth forest structure.

The U.S. Forest Service acquired Converse Basin in 1935, and subsequent management included efforts at restoration. A young forest regenerated after logging, but wildfire repeatedly interrupted its development. The 1955 McGee Fire burned much of the recovering forest. The Forest Service then established plantations in heavily burned areas, while fire exclusion allowed surface and ladder fuels to accumulate. The Rough Fire burned through the grove in 2015. Converse Basin continues to regenerate and has been used to study forest resilience and restoration.: 36, 45 

Converse Basin Grove is home to several notable giant sequoia trees, including the Boole Tree, the sixth largest of its kind in the world, and the Chicago Stump, the remains of the General Noble Tree which was cut down for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Another notable tree in the grove is the Muir Snag, which is believed to have been 3,500 years old at the time of its death, making it one of the oldest known giant sequoias.

History

Eponym

Converse Basin was named after Charles Porter Converse. Converse was a founder of the Kings River Lumber Company and had planned to log the area in the 1860s. However, an economic recession interrupted Converse's plans. He left the company shortly after its founding.: 55–56 

Logging era

Loggers and a team of horses pose on top of a fallen sequoia 26 feet in diameter. Converse Basin, 1901.
Loggers and a team of horses pose on a fallen giant sequoia measuring 26 feet (7.9 m) in diameter.

Converse Basin was once the world's second-largest giant sequoia grove before most of its mature giant sequoias were logged between 1892 and 1918. Large-scale logging began under the Sanger Lumber Company, which felled an estimated 8,000 giant sequoias in an episode described as "the greatest orgy of destructive lumbering in the history of the world." Only about 60 to 100 large giant sequoias survived the logging.

By November 1899, the Converse Basin mill had produced 19 million board feet of lumber that season. This was equivalent to approximately 2.6% of California's reported lumber production of 737 million board feet for the year.

Conservation and federal ownership

Concern over logging in the giant sequoia groves of the Sierra Nevada became part of California's emerging conservation movement in the late 19th century. Visalia newspaper publisher and editor George W. Stewart was a prominent advocate for preserving the groves and pointed to the extensive logging in Converse Basin as an example of what could happen to other giant sequoia forests. He campaigned for federal protection of the remaining groves, including the Giant Forest, which became part of Sequoia National Park when the park was established in 1890.: 24–29 

Converse Basin itself remained unprotected as logging continued. In 1902, John Muir wrote that preserving the Converse Basin groves was "vastly more important" than saving the individual Boole Tree and described the groves as being rapidly destroyed.

Converse Basin remained in private ownership until 1935, when the U.S. Forest Service purchased more than 20,000 acres that included the grove, Hume Lake, ten other giant sequoia groves, and surrounding lands.

Federal ownership did not immediately end commercial logging in Converse Basin. A 1990 agreement on the management of giant sequoia groves in Sequoia National Forest made an exception for part of the second-growth forest in Converse Basin. The Forest Service later excluded giant sequoia groves in California from commercial timber production and directed that they be managed for protection and restoration.

In 2000, Converse Basin became part of the newly established Giant Sequoia National Monument. The proclamation prohibited timber production within the monument and limited tree removal primarily to ecological restoration, maintenance, and public safety.

Environmental impact

The logging of Converse Basin caused extensive deforestation and the loss of most of its old-growth forest, including thousands of mature giant sequoias and associated conifers. In 1915, Henry Seidel Canby wrote evocatively of the destruction in Harper's Monthly.

It lay, a great bowl, open and near the sky, views down from its southern rim to the great plain, an edge of forest cresting it to the north. All within was a vast and lonely cemetery. A stream wound among broken trunks, torn roots, and whitened slabs of lumber, through the midst of the grassy valley. Above the thin turf rose weathered pines or clumps of feathery sequoia, like Italian cypresses, and beneath and beside them, at decorous intervals, were the great tombs of the dead sequoia.

They were only stumps, but in that melancholy landscape stumps like these had power over the imagination. The bark had long since gone from them, but the wood held firm and fast. Ten feet, fifteen feet, twenty feet, they rose above the ground, and two of us could lie head-to-head upon the tops as we pored over their thousand years of rings.

Twenty years had brought back beauty to this wasted valley, though beauty of a strange and melancholy sort. Flowers were everywhere, most of all where the little stream at intervals drew over its ripples a canopy of pink azalea, now in fullest bloom. But the forest had gone. An indiscriminate slaughter had let in the sun, its enemy; had dried the springs, which were its lifeblood; and such tearing and ripping as we had seen at Hume had rendered the soil, its mother, unfit except for barren grass. A few lonely redwoods, spared out of wantonness, had done their best to plant the spaces, but the younglings near them could only patch the ground; the pines and firs had well-nigh given up the struggle. Ranging cattle were more than a match for Nature and her seedling trees. In the great stumps themselves, in blocks and fragments scattered over the soil, in the logs which choked the streams, was more dead and wasted lumber than a forester could hope to grow on so many acres in a hundred years. The story of the Appalachians was being told again, and more loudly.

This panoramic photo of the Converse Basin Mill illustrates the clearcutting logging practices.

In the 1930s, Sequoia National Park commissioner Walter Fry and superintendent John R. White, “marveled that man had been able by crude methods to do so much damage.”: 20 

Regeneration and restoration

Historic giant sequoia stumps and second-growth mixed-conifer forest in Converse Basin Grove, 2022.

Converse Basin is regenerating, but over-logging sharply truncated its age structure. A forest that once contained trees spanning thousands of years became dominated by younger growth. Fire exclusion altered the recovering forest, and repeated wildfires damaged younger stands. The return of old-growth structure will take centuries.

Converse Basin eight years after the 1955 McGee Fire, showing forest regrowth in 1963.

Major fires burned through Converse Basin in 1928 and 1955. The 1955 McGee Fire burned most of the grove and threatened the Boole Tree. In 2015, the Rough Fire burned through Converse Basin and damaged planted stands.

Standing dead conifers and piled woody debris in 2022.

After the McGee Fire, the Forest Service established plantations, mostly of ponderosa pine, in heavily burned areas. As the second-growth forest developed, surface and ladder fuels accumulated. Some planted stands were later damaged by drought, insects, and the Rough Fire. Subsequent management has focused on reducing fuels and restoring a more native mixture of tree species.

Hiking and recreation

Converse Basin includes several hiking trails and recreation areas, including the Boole Tree Trail, Chicago Stump Trail, and Stump Meadow.

Notable trees

Notable trees and remnants in the grove include:

See also

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Converse Basin Grove". US Forest Service - Sequoia National Forest. Archived from the original on July 28, 2020. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
  2. 1 2 3 "Giant Sequoia National Monument Management Plan" (PDF). USDA.gov. United States Department of Agriculture. August 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 24, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2023.
  3. 1 2 Zimmerman, Robert (Fall 1998). "Log Flume". American Heritage's Invention and Technology. American Heritage. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Converse Basin Grove" (PDF). U.S. Forest Service. 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 Piirto, Douglas D. (October 30, 2001). Converse Basin, A Research/Demonstration Area (Report). Giant Sequoia National Monument Science Advisory Board. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 "Chapter 3: Affected Environment". Giant Sequoia National Monument Final Environmental Impact Statement (PDF) (Report). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region. 2012. pp. 162–163. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  7. 1 2 Immediate post-fire effects of the Rough Fire on giant sequoia groves (PDF) (Report). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  8. 1 2 "Converse Basin Grove". United States Forest Service. USDA. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
  9. ↑ "King's River Rafting and Lumbering Franchise". Sacramento Daily Union. Sacramento, California. January 22, 1872. Retrieved December 25, 2022.
  10. ↑ "City Intelligence". Sacramento Daily Union. Sacramento, California. January 19, 1876. Retrieved December 25, 2022. There were filed yesterday in the office of the Secretary of State articles of incorporation of the King's River Lumbering Company, organized for the purpose of manufacturing lumber, posts and timber, etc., in the mountains of Fresno county. Capital, $100,000 in shares of $100 each. Directors — B. F. Scott, Jesse Morrow. William Helm, J. M. Gregory and Charles P. Converse. The principal place of business will be in the town of Fresno.
  11. ↑ Johnston, Hank (2003). They Felled the Redwoods (13th ed.). Stauffer Publishing. ISBN 0-87046-003-X.
  12. ↑ "Still Sawing Lumber". Hanford Journal (Daily). November 20, 1899 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  13. ↑ U.S. Bureau of the Census (1931). Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1931 (PDF). Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. p. 756.
  14. ↑ Farmer, Jared (2017). Trees in Paradise: A California History. Berkeley, California: Heyday Books. p. 44. ISBN 9780393078022.
  15. 1 2 Fry, Walter; White, John R. (1930). Big Trees. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press.
  16. ↑ Newhall, C. S. (November 6, 1902). "Letter from C. S. Newhall to John Muir, 1902 Nov 6". John Muir Correspondence. Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. Retrieved September 20, 2026.
  17. ↑ Aune, Philip S., ed. (1994). Proceedings of the Symposium on Giant Sequoias: Their Place in the Ecosystem and Society (PDF) (Report). General Technical Report PSW-GTR-151. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  18. ↑ Stewart, Ronald; Key, Sandra H.; Waldron, Bruce A.; Rogers, Robert R. (1994). Giant Sequoia Management in the National Forests of California (PDF). Proceedings of the Symposium on Giant Sequoias: Their Place in the Ecosystem and Society (Report). General Technical Report PSW-GTR-151. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station. pp. 152–158. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  19. ↑ Stewart, Ronald; Key, Sandra H.; Waldron, Bruce A.; Rogers, Robert R. (1994). Giant Sequoia Management in the National Forests of California (PDF). Proceedings of the Symposium on Giant Sequoias: Their Place in the Ecosystem and Society (Report). General Technical Report PSW-GTR-151. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station. pp. 152–158. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  20. ↑ Clinton, William J. (April 15, 2000). "Proclamation 7295—Establishment of the Giant Sequoia National Monument". The American Presidency Project. University of California, Santa Barbara. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  21. ↑ Canby, Henry Seidel (June 1915). "The Last Stand of the Redwoods". Harper's Monthly Magazine. Vol. CXXXL. New York and London: Harper Brothers Publishers. p. 58. Retrieved December 23, 2022.
  22. ↑ Willard, Dwight (1994). "Selected Perspectives on the Giant Sequoia Groves" (PDF). Proceedings of the Symposium on Giant Sequoias: Their Place in the Ecosystem and Society. General Technical Report PSW-GTR-151. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station. pp. 15–27. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  23. ↑ "Sierra Fire Leaps Lines, Hits Basin". Madera Tribune. Madera, California. September 9, 1955. Retrieved December 26, 2022.
  24. 1 2 3 Schedule of Proposed Actions (PDF) (Report). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Sequoia National Forest. October 1, 2020. p. 3. Retrieved September 19, 2026.
  25. 1 2 3 4 5 McKinney, John (April 21, 2002). "It's Clear-Cut: Converse Basin's Sequoias Were Once Majestic". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
  26. ↑ Limbaugh, Ron (1992). "Reflections on a Redwood Snag". John Muir Newsletter. Sierra Club. Retrieved January 4, 2023.