Fall of the Dyerville Giant
We stopped at two popular redwood groves along the Avenue of the Giants, but I'm winding down the trees section of the trip, so I'm only going to post a couple of pictures from one.
The first grove was called the Rockefeller Grove, where we took a portion of a mile-long loop trail. The grove was named after John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the second-generation Standard Oil magnate who in 1917 was convinced by the Save the Redwoods League to buy the grove and donate it to the state of California. That grove became the heart of what would soon become Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and it's a big part of why there are still any redwoods left in California at all. Once Rockefeller got the ball rolling, California started preserving redwood groves as state parks all over the place.
Side Note: I don't have a sense of how well-known Rockefeller's contribution to the preservation of natural places is. He was responsible for the existence of a number of national parks, which you wouldn't think for an oil tycoon. Acadia exists solely because of Rockefeller, and he paid for significant pieces of the Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah, and Grand Teton. And he paid for museums at Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, and a bunch of other places. It seems that at one time, rich people used to do good things with their money besides buying disinformation web sites and tossing other rich people into outer space.
This picture comes from the Founders Grove, the second named redwood grove we visited. There are a number of notable trees at the Founders Grove, but the giant fallen log you see at the right is probably the most famous. That's the Dyerville Giant, which probably isn't the most creative name they could have come up with, but if you check the person on the trail next to the tree up ahead for scale, you'll see the name's accurate. The tree was first noticed by a UC-Berkeley forestry professor back in 1966, when it was still standing. It was around 1,600 years old, and it was at least 372 feet tall. That's taller than the tallest buildings in 15 states, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. It was, in fact, the tallest of all the known coast redwoods, but nobody actually realized that until they took exact measurements after it fell in 1991.
Unfortunately, the Dyerville Giant didn't die of natural causes. It was killed by one of its neighbors growing 50 yards away, which had been undermined by heavy rains during an unusually wet period. That tree fell into another tree, causing the second tree to lean. The lean in the second tree grew progressively worse over the course of a week, until it finally gave way in the middle of the night and crashed head-on into the Dyerville Giant. The force of the impact was enough to take the giant down, and the sound of it boomed through the neighboring landscape. The reports say that somebody living in a house a half-mile away thought a train had crashed.
This tree has been on the ground now for 31 years, and the decomposition process has barely begun. Remnants of this tree will remain here for centuries more.
Fall of the Dyerville Giant
We stopped at two popular redwood groves along the Avenue of the Giants, but I'm winding down the trees section of the trip, so I'm only going to post a couple of pictures from one.
The first grove was called the Rockefeller Grove, where we took a portion of a mile-long loop trail. The grove was named after John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the second-generation Standard Oil magnate who in 1917 was convinced by the Save the Redwoods League to buy the grove and donate it to the state of California. That grove became the heart of what would soon become Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and it's a big part of why there are still any redwoods left in California at all. Once Rockefeller got the ball rolling, California started preserving redwood groves as state parks all over the place.
Side Note: I don't have a sense of how well-known Rockefeller's contribution to the preservation of natural places is. He was responsible for the existence of a number of national parks, which you wouldn't think for an oil tycoon. Acadia exists solely because of Rockefeller, and he paid for significant pieces of the Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah, and Grand Teton. And he paid for museums at Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, and a bunch of other places. It seems that at one time, rich people used to do good things with their money besides buying disinformation web sites and tossing other rich people into outer space.
This picture comes from the Founders Grove, the second named redwood grove we visited. There are a number of notable trees at the Founders Grove, but the giant fallen log you see at the right is probably the most famous. That's the Dyerville Giant, which probably isn't the most creative name they could have come up with, but if you check the person on the trail next to the tree up ahead for scale, you'll see the name's accurate. The tree was first noticed by a UC-Berkeley forestry professor back in 1966, when it was still standing. It was around 1,600 years old, and it was at least 372 feet tall. That's taller than the tallest buildings in 15 states, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. It was, in fact, the tallest of all the known coast redwoods, but nobody actually realized that until they took exact measurements after it fell in 1991.
Unfortunately, the Dyerville Giant didn't die of natural causes. It was killed by one of its neighbors growing 50 yards away, which had been undermined by heavy rains during an unusually wet period. That tree fell into another tree, causing the second tree to lean. The lean in the second tree grew progressively worse over the course of a week, until it finally gave way in the middle of the night and crashed head-on into the Dyerville Giant. The force of the impact was enough to take the giant down, and the sound of it boomed through the neighboring landscape. The reports say that somebody living in a house a half-mile away thought a train had crashed.
This tree has been on the ground now for 31 years, and the decomposition process has barely begun. Remnants of this tree will remain here for centuries more.