Kings River and other lumber companies logged the Converse Basin from 1892 through the early 1920s. They felled thousands of sequoias, but only a fraction of them ever made it to the mill. Sequoia wood is much more brittle than redwood, and many of the biggest trees smashed into unusable pieces on contact, even with the felling beds.
“There was a huge amount of loss in the felling,” says Tweed. “Estimates from the 1930s were that half or more of the wood was still on the ground; it simply wasn't worth picking up. That’s how wasteful it was.”
The logging companies and their investors sunk so much money into the mills, railroads and flumes that they tried to squeeze every last penny out of the Converse Basin.
“Business being business, once you’ve invested that much money, you have to keep trying,” says Tweed. “So they cut down pretty much the entire grove trying to find a way to make money cutting down the grove.”
When the slaughter was over, only one truly grand giant sequoia was left standing. Known as the
Boole Tree, it was named after Frank Boole, a supervisor with Sanger Lumber. The story goes that Boole spared the tree as a reminder of what once stood in Converse Basin, but it’s more likely that the tree was simply too big and too awkwardly situated to chop down.
Eventually the federal government bought back Converse Basin and all of California’s giant sequoia groves to create
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Visitors to Converse Basin can still see reminders of the destructive logging—massive stumps and rotting logs—but also “young” stands of century-old sequoias reaching for the skies.
“We sold the forest for the good of the country and bought it back for the good of the country,” says Tweed.
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