LAND OF GIANT TREES

ATURE'S forest masterpiece is John Muir's designation of the giant tree after which is named the Sequoia National Park in middle eastern California. Here, within an area of two hundred and thirty-seven square miles, are found several large groves of the celebrated Sequoia gigantea, popularly known as the Big Tree of California.

More than a million of these trees grow within the park's narrow confines, many of them mere babes of a few hundred years, many sturdy youths of a thousand years, many in the young vigor of two or three thousand years, and a few in full maturity. The principal entrance is Visalia, California.

Half a dozen miles away is the General Grant National Park, whose four square miles were set apart because they contained the General Grant Tree, second only in size and age to the patriarch of all, the General Sherman Tree.

On Sequoia's favored slopes grow other monsters, also. It is the park of big trees of many kinds; and it is the park of birds.

The Sequoia National Park is the gateway to one of the grandest scenic areas in this or any other land. Over its borders to the north and east lies a land of sublime nobility whose wild rivers and tortuous canyons, whose glacier-carved precipices and vast snowy summits culminating in the supreme altitude of Whitney, will make it some day surpassed in celebrity by none.

VIEW OF THE BIG ARROYO FROM SAWTOOTH PEAK Photograph by Rodney L. Glisan

IT IS THE IDEAL PARK FOR CAMPING Photograph by U. S. Geological Survey