This is the second in a series of occasional essays that revisit individual geographer’s early encounters with a particular landscape. The authors have been asked to examine how that landscape might have changed since their initial observation and how their professional perspective might have altered their understanding of that scene. It is our hope that these essays deepen our understanding of the subjectivity and objectivity of place, personal and professional experience.
The summer of 1970 found me facing the most massive single-trunked tree on earth—the General Sherman Tree (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in Sequoia National Park [36° 34' 54" N 118° 45' 05.5" W]. I had just changed my undergraduate major to geography to pursue a growing interest in the interaction of humans with their environments. The National Park Service (NPS), established in 1916, explained the size and age of sequoias, their rarity and previous history of despoilation, and the complexity of protecting them from further threats. The ultimate message was that these resources and other preserves followed a very different set of goals and rules from the rest of the world’s societies and places.
Over the next fifteen years I returned to Sequoia National Park and its adjacent co-managed Kings Canyon National Park [36° 53' 16.2816'' N 118°33″ 18.5220 W] many times to explore and camp with friends and family. Over a campfire in late 1985 I told my sister and her husband, “I should find a way to work in this place.” A month later, as I sat in my office at the University of South Alabama, I opened the Association of American Geographers newsletter (name reversed since then) to find a request from NPS Bureau Historian Barry Mackintosh for geographers to produce administrative histories of national park units. I called Barry five minutes later. He explained that each of these histories is a tool for park managers that documents the campaign to establish a park, the legal framework within which it operates, and the resource management, visitation, and other issues it has faced up to the present. He assured me that the twin parks were available for study and coordinated my appointment as a volunteer-in-park (VIP) to do the work
An administrative history requires extensive archival research and field exposure to learn about policies and their results throughout a park. I participated in training for ranger-interpreters, attended meetings in which the resource management staff identified boundaries for designated wilderness, and interviewed many park employees. Park official William Tweed, with a doctorate in history, eventually became second author on the 1990 history entitled Challenge of the Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. We published the expanded second version in 2016 with Tweed as first author. The two parks cover 865,964 acres (350,443 hectares) and range from 1,370 ft (418 meters) in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada to the tallest peak in the contiguous United States, Mt. Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4421 meters) [36° 34′ 43″ N 118° 17′ 31″ W]. During research for the administrative histories, two issues dominated the management story, both occurring in the small 2,312-acre (936-hectare) grove of sequoias known as Giant Forest [36° 33′ 56″ N 118°45′ 58″ W]. One was the issue of infrastructure among the sequoia trees and the second was the role of fire as part of the ecological integrity of the ancient forest.
Stephen Mather and Horace Albright, the first two directors of the NPS, shared the same fears for the survival of the young agency and the zeal to help people experience the wonders of the national parks. Seasonal companies in far-flung places received monopoly contracts as concessioners for lodging and other services. This gave those companies rights and privileges to profit from their business but created a tension between them and the NPS with its mission to preserve resources for future generations. Nowhere was this more obvious than amidst the sequoias in Giant Forest [36° 33′ 56″ N 118°45′ 58″ W]. Superintendent John White who managed the park from 1920 through 1947 with one short interruption first challenged the concessioners in 1929 urging them to move out of the grove. Instead, they appealed to enlarge the “pillow limit” from 1,000 to a higher number of guests in their cabins.
After White’s retirement, the NPS allowed a leaning sequoia tree to be chopped down in 1950 because it threatened the cabins. Throughout the Mission 66 program ending in 1966, the NPS focused on upgrading visitor infrastructure. In 1964, a new concession company received permission to raise the pillow limit to 1,250. But the rise of its science mission and a decline in natural resource conditions energized the NPS to restore the grove’s ecological integrity. In 1969 the agency closed the Hazelwood picnic area after a falling tree killed a visitor. Two years later the NPS closed the remaining campgrounds in Giant Forest [36° 33′ 56″ N 118°45′ 58″ W] and removed some of its own structures. The concession company remained adamant that visitors would never accept sleeping anywhere but under the giant sequoias. With legal contracts the NPS could not force them out.
Prescribed burning also began in the 1960s in response to studies by ecologist Richard Hartesveldt. The first burns were small and barely affected the huge overload of fuel from a century of fire suppression. The results were promising despite the negative effects of smoke and an ever-present threat of an escaping conflagration. This program became a regular management tool, especially in Giant Forest by the late 1970s. Firefighters observed that wildfire behavior was reduced as it hit previously burned areas. These moderate fires allowed them to work close to the fire, digging fire lines to prevent flames from spreading further into Giant Forest [36° 33′ 56″ N 118°45′ 58″ W]. Some in the public opposed these burns because they charred the bark of the standing giants. The NPS strove to limit this effect but continued the prescribed burns. After sixty years in Giant Forest the fuel load is still fifty percent of what it was when they began (Brigham 2024; Cotton and McBride 1987; Hartesveldt 1962; Tweed and Dilsaver 2016, 296-304).
The last concession contract ended in 1996 and full restoration began the following year. The removal of infrastructure took place at eleven locations: the four campgrounds, Hazelwood picnic area, four lodging complexes, the commercial dining and shopping at Giant Forest Village, and the parking and viewing complex at the General Sherman Tree (See Maps Two, Three, and Four). Many cabins in the Upper Kaweah area had already been replaced by modular motel units in 1983. The NPS decided to keep the parking spaces for them on the already disturbed land to serve as parking across the Generals Highway for the museum planned for the village market building. [36° 33' 53"N 118° 46' 22" W]. A staging area for the new park shuttlebus operation occupies the site next to the museum. This was part of the solution to overcrowding and fewer total parking places after removal of all the lodgings.
Athena Demetry, a master of science candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spent the summer of 1991 working in the parks. She became interested in the Giant Forest project and opted to make the proposed restoration of the grove the focus of her graduate research. Her work became the official approach to the problem, and she led the expensive and complicated project for the park. Demetry found that the impacts of development in Giant Forest included modification of landforms, topsoil erosion, loss of organic matter, soil compaction, and the absence of understory vegetation, surface litter, the duff layer, and the soil seed bank (Hartesveldt 1962; Demetry and Manning 2001; Demetry 2024).
The restoration objective was to demolish and remove infrastructure without causing further damage. The modus operandi was to treat Giant Forest as if a major fire had burned down all the infrastructure. This meant fire would be involved in reestablishing the trees after restoration. By 2001, 282 buildings, 24 acres of asphalt, dozens of manholes, and all exposed sewer and waterpipes, underground propane tanks, and aerial utility lines had been removed (Map Three). Park crews and contractors used implements ranging from heavy equipment to hand tools in sensitive areas. To protect soils and vegetation, contractors installed fencing around sensitive sites and residual vegetation. To protect shallow roots, workers left underground pipes in place unless portions were exposed. In those cases, they removed them down to two feet below the surface and plugged the remainders with concrete to prevent channeling of groundwater through the pipes. The last lodging facilities to go were the Upper Kaweah motel units in 1998 (Demetry and Manning 2001; Demetry 2024).
The restoration of Giant Forest erased much of the heavy visual human imprint from the grove shown in the images that follow:
Many forests globally are experiencing increases in large, high-severity wildfires, often with increasingly inadequate post-fire tree regeneration. The giant sequoias of the Sierra Nevada experienced historically intense wildfires that killed an estimated 13–19 percent of mature sequoias across their native range during the early 2020s. Particularly damaging was the KNP Complex Fire in the Redwood Canyon section of Sequoia National Forest [36° 34' 1'' N 118° 48' 41 '' W]. That wildfire scorched some trees over the line in Sequoia National Park at its northern entrance (Figure Twelve). Seedlings germinating after these fires then met exceptional summer heat and the two most severe summer droughts of the 121-year historical record. Efforts to reestablish vegetation including sequoias required action. Park officials tried direct planting, treating the exposed areas with fire and then planting, and letting nature take its course. Research showed that planting or natural regeneration need to occur very soon after sites are cleared. In many recent cases the seeds available in the soil were incapable of overcoming the persistent drought conditions, higher temperatures, and insect infestations.
Research now focuses on how to identify areas that might require post-fire planting. Forest managers need to determine seedling reference densities after a high-severity fire and compare them to the natural seedling densities adequate to regenerate a forest. These post-fire seedling densities of sequoias should match the level that allowed recovery after the moderate fires that were common in the past. Researchers state that a planned and well-executed program is necessary to prevent the loss of an entire sequoia grove (Soderberg et, al. 2023; Stephenson et al. 2019; Stephenson et al. 2024). More than ever human management of these ancient forests is required to counter human caused global warming and its many effects.
Preparation for future fires includes several aggressive steps. When high-severity wildfires threaten giant sequoias that have not had a recent fire history, park staff may move downed wood away from the trunks, rake the duff away from the base of trees, and cut thin small live trees to reduce ladder fuels. This can be effective for high-value trees but it is a last-resort and costly. Near the major named sequoias, fire crews cut pines and white fir to reduce the height of a fire and preserve the forest crown (See Figure Thirteen).
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks tried tree wraps during the severe KNP Complex Fire in 2021, due to the risk for very high-value trees like the General Sherman and others in the Giant Forest [36° 34' 54" N 118° 45' 05.5" W] (Figure Fourteen). This was not a regular treatment, but one where they were taking the highest precautions. It helped with messaging about the risks of unprecedented high-severity wildfire in giant sequoias. It has only been used once but the option is not closed for the future. These extreme measures along with sixty years of prescribed burns kept Giant Forest safe during the severe fires that burned in the early 2020s (See Map Five).
What did I learn from the changes to Giant Forest through restoration and prescribed fires? Two things: First, this paragon of natural wonders is intensively managed by humans as they adapt science and experience to promote ecological integrity. It is no more a natural wild place than any other piece of the environment. Restoration and management are deliberate choices. Second, the role of fire in natural places is a policy choice that is controversial and fraught with dangerous, unexpected outcomes. Nevertheless, it so far has proven its worth in Giant Forest despite anthropocentrically interlinked conditions of global warming, insect infestation, and drought. These realities have informed my work on several dozen other NPS units as well as analyses of the entire national park system (Dilsaver 2016; Dilsaver 2024). Issues that affect the human-ecosystem relationship include philosophical, political, legal, social, cultural, and historical characteristics of both the public and the NPS. Environmental realities including physical, geomorphic, climatic, and ecological qualities present myriad landscapes and resources. The one truism of geography is the infinite array of human-environment interactive relationships that shape the world. Focusing on a place purposely set aside to be “unimpaired for future generations” shows the depth of that interaction.