Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-11-23
ION THE SIERRA RANGE
Scenic Wonders in the East.
ern Part of California.
LAND OF THE BIG TREES
How Nature Has Preserved Records
Of the Weather.
LAKES AT HIGH ALTITUDE
Famous Golden Trout Of Mount
Whitney the Most Beautiful Of
the Western Trout.
BY WILLIAM f.. CERTIS

BY WILLIAM f. CURTIS.
Written for The Star and the Chicago Record
Herald
Paul Shoup of the Southern Pacific rail-
road has recently been making an explo-
ration of wonderful country which lies
in the eastern part of California. south
east of the Yosemite valley and the great
national park, and the other day in re-
lating some of his experiences he said:
Between the Yosemite region on the
north and where the Kern river breaks
through the Great Divide in the south are
the highest mountains of the Sierra range,
and indeed of the United States outside
Alaska Nor are the mountains the only
remarkable feature. Within this section
lies the finest portion of the greatest
coniferous forest on the globe, the highest
mountain peaks of our country proper,
and the greatest of our glacier carved
canyons
1.-THE Sequoia National Park contains a
greater number of big trees the Sequoia
altogether, If we except the Tule river
groves. The tree General Sherman"
which 7 have measured. contains probably
more feet of lumber than any other living
tree. 1t is 1Ol feet in circumference at
the base and tapers very gradually up
ward to its top some 300 feet above
ground In the same forest are not only
scores but thousands of large trees: not
less than 1000 having diameter ex-
ceeding fifteen feet. Nor are these the
fir, which myself measured, are be-
tween seven and eight feet in diameter
four feet above the ground. Here are
great yellow and sugar pines. attaining
height of 300 feet, and fine cedars, and,
in the higher attitudes, the brilliantly COL
ored, sturdy storm-beaten juniper and
mountain pine
"The western slopes of the Sierra are
forested with wonderful trees, towering
from 200 to 325 feet high. dense enough
almost to exclude the sunlight, with little
underground between them: sentinels
standing above needle-carpeted earth
with arms entwined hundred feet or
more above its surface.
The oldest of these giants are the
Big Trees" continued Mr.. Shoup, 1.-THE
Sequoias. which John Muir, by counting
the concentric rings of stump. has
proved to have attained an age of over
David Starr Jordan says. may very well
have attained an age of 1000 or 5000
years. A very interesting and curious
experiment resulted from a discussion
| Big Tree stump. Each year a tree
adds layer to its trunk. and the divid-
ing line between that and the preceding
layer is indicated by a mark forming a
ring about the center of the tree.
Weather Records in Trees.
| I'm studying these rings, Supervisor
Frye of the Sequoia National Park OBJ
| served that the intervening spaces were
| OF Irregular sizes. indicating that in
| some years the trees had made greater
growth than in others. Between a local
| scientist and himself a momentous dis
| cussion arose: Did the lean rings indicate
years of great SHOWS and high waters
and cold weather in the Sierra, and the
fiat rings indicate low waters, scant
SHOWS and mild weather, or vice versa
Frye contended that the years of little
| growth were the ones of great rainfall
and snowfall. with cold weather. because
the growing season would be correspond
ingly short for these Big Trees, which
in no place are found below 5000 feet
altitude. thence upward to 5000 feet, and
which in the Sequoia Park are prob
ably all above the forty five hundred-f foot
| line. An ingenious solution was reach
| ed. The rings were numbered backward
| from the year of the discussion for
some fifty years and given relative size
on scale. The scale was sent to the
weather bureau in San Francisco and
as the weather bureau records go they
correspond exactly with the history re-
corded by the Big Trees The cold and
rainy years were the years of little
| Srowth' the ory, warm years the years
OF larger growths.
"Thereupon Supervisor Frye and his
friends proceeded to construct Sierra
| weather record back for a thousand
years or so. determining some very I'M
usual and remarkable things. About a
hundred years ago there was a series
of very cold years-a dozen or more in
| which the Sierra apparently hardly es-
| capped from its blanket Of snow even in
| its lower reaches, and now the oldest
inhabitants are asking. will such time
| come again?
Remains Of Lakes.
"In the Sequoia Park, and, indeed in
all the high Sierras below timber line. -
said Mr.. Shopp. ARE beautiful little
meadows, thousands in the aggregate,
which are source of great delight to
the traveller and even more so to his pack
and riding animals dependent upon then,
| for food. These meadows were originally
| little lakes, little ravines damned by
some big tree fallen on the cup-like hol-
low ground cut out by a glacier, dam
med possibly by what the biologists cal
a talus, which is mass of rocky frag-
ments lying at the base of a cliff. or q
moraine, which is the accumulation OF
rock and debris along the edge of a
glacier. There the streams of the Sierras
poured into them not only water. but
earth. and 10! the rock basin became en-
circled with a rim of vegetation growing
broader and broader, and finally absorb
ing the lake much as a sponge might do
and creating out of it thing of mar
| velous summer beauty with its fifteen or
more kinds of succulent green grasses,
and its wild gardens of lilies, veratrum,
larkspur, columbines. lupines. valerian,
| tulips. CELIA, geranium, daisies. sunfiow-
| ers. saxifrage. azaleas. and hundreds of
other flowers that make gay and brilliant
the Sierra summer.
THE Sierra summer. by the way, is
nothing to be measured by the calendar
In the middle attitudes of the Sierra July
may be said be spring; in the higher
attitudes eaI;y August is spring, and
summer CIR yds hard upon it's heels in
later August and early September. with
an autumn that ordinarily fees before
the winters blasts of October. The ber-