Back in the mid-1800’s California was being flooded with immigrants
because of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill. Tens of thousands of men came overland and by ship to head for the gold fields and, although very few of them actually ever got rich, most of them did stay and settle in California after the gold fever had run its course and burned out. The Sierra Nevada Mountains, which had heretofore never been thoroughly explored, was beginning to feel the effects of this vast influx of wealth seekers. And, although the wealth never materialized for most and they left the mountains to settle in cities or on farms, many stayed on in the mountains and lived here for some years. And some of those discovered that the Sierra Nevada also had other types of wealth to offer. In a previous posting the story of the Mother of the Forest which took place in Calaveras County in 1854 was related. But in the year 1854, when that tale took place, no one had as yet started logging these Big Trees up here in Grant Grove. In fact, this area of the mountains hadn’t even taken on the name of Grant Grove yet. That name got tacked on to this area in 1867, when a woman by the name of Mrs. Lucretia Baker made a three day wagon trip from Visalia to this area and tacked a sign on to the biggest tree she could find, naming it after her Civil War hero, General Ulysses S. Grant. The American Civil War had ended barely two years before and was still quite fresh in everyone’s mind. Although the state of California had not actively participated in the fighting, it was generally felt that the state’s sympathies lay with the Union Army. Hence General Grant, who had followed several lackluster generals in command and had turned the Union Army into a much more effective fighting machine, was a hero to many, just as Washington had been after the American Revolutionary War. So when Lucretia Baker attached his name to the tree it stuck, both literally and figuratively. And when she and others went home to spread the word about Grant Grove and its trees, the area became even more well known. More and more people were making the trip up the mountain, and some of them wanted to make money from those trees without investing the time, effort, and money of forming a logging company and hiring hundreds of men. They wanted to make money for just one person – themselves. And they wanted to do it quickly. One such entrepreneur was a man by the name of Martin Vivian, and this is the story of him and of a tree which is now known as the Centennial Stump. Mr. Vivian was said to be a professional promoter who hailed from San Francisco. In 1875, when he was about 70 years old, he showed up in Grant Grove and broached the idea of cutting down one of the Big Trees and shipping it east to be displayed at the Centennial Exposition which was being planned to be held in Philadelphia the following year to celebrate the one-hundredth birthday of the United States as an independent country, and he had his eyes on the huge trees which were standing here in Grant Grove. So up the mountain he came to pick out the tree he was going to cut down. Now, there was only one thing standing in the way of Mr. Vivian. Just a year before, in March of 1874, the California state legislature had passed a law which forbade anyone from destroying or cutting down any tree over sixteen feet in diameter in this part of he mountains. Now, this law was destined to be largely ignored as the years passed, but in 1875 Martin Vivian was destined to be the first to test it. Once he arrived at Grant Grove he picked out a large tree in the grove, hired some men, and proceeded to have them cut it down. The Tulare County sheriff sent deputies up to arrest him and haul him down to appear in court, where he pled guilty to violating the law and was promptly fined, a penalty which he promptly and gladly paid. As it turned out, this was apparently just what Mr. Vivian wanted, because he had a plan all worked out. Martin Vivian promptly returned to Grant Grove and hired two loggers to cut down an even larger Sequoia tree. It took them about a week to fall it. Then they cut a sixteen foot section and cut that into eight pie-shaped wedges, and these were hauled out of the mountains and down into the valley and then had it shipped back East by our friends at the Southern Pacific Railroad. John Muir was actually here in Grant Grove at this time. He watched the tree being fallen, and both he and others leveled heavy criticism at Martin Vivian for what he was doing. But they couldn’t get him arrested again. It seemed that there was a glitch in the law passed by the California legislature, and Martin Vivian knew about it. This glitch prevented him from being charged twice for the same crime. So after pleading guilty once and paying his fine he was now free to do it again with no penalty whatsoever, and that was apparently what he’d had in mind the whole time. Later in 1875 Martin Vivian reassembled the pieces and showed them at the Missouri State Fair, kind of like a warm-up for the Centennial Exposition. P.T. Barnum actually came to see it there and Martin Vivian tried to sell it to him, but Barnum wouldn’t bite. So the pieces of the giant Sequoia tree made it to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, where people stood in line and bought tickets for twenty-five cents to see one of the hugest things ever made by Mother Nature. But something happened in Philadelphia that hadn’t happened in Missouri. Maybe the light was better in Philadelphia, or maybe people could just see better there than in Missouri. Because now when they got into the tent people could see that eight different pieces of wood had been fitted together to form this “tree”, and it promptly got labeled the ‘California Hoax”. So Vivian tried once again to sell it to P.T. Barnum, but Barnum could see that there was no profit to be made once it had become the butt of laughter. The stump of the Centennial Tree still sits along the Grant Tree trail, just a little over the rail fence. For decades after it was fallen it was known as the School Stump because the children of the loggers attended classes while sitting on it. It was about 1800 years old when it died. Imagine what it must have been like to attend the Centennial Exposition in 1876 – the United States had been an independent country for an entire century! The Civil War was over and the country was healing. The railroad was now connecting the entire three thousand mile breadth of the country. People were proud and excited, and there was a spirit of the entrepreneur all over the land. Making money was looked upon as a good thing. People who did so were admired and respected. Yet Martin Vivian, a man who was known as a professional promoter, failed in his attempt with the Sequoia tree. He was laughed at and labeled a hoaxer. And the irony of it was that he was actually telling the absolute truth the whole time. It would be too simple to just dismiss this as yet another example of greed bringing about destruction. Greed did indeed play a part, as the desire for wealth brought many men to these mountains. Yet this was only one manifestation of that which brought men here. The underlying motive which brought them here was the same motive which brought shiploads of people to North America from Europe in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds; which moved families across the continent in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds; which brought men to the highest mountains they could find. This was the desire for change; to make life better for oneself and one’s family; to find the difference that hope always promised to those willing to take a chance. These mountains we call home offered that promise of a better life to many, and although for many this manifested itself in greed, many others found it realized in a more peaceful and productive manner. Perhaps it’s only because we tend to remember those who lived their lives in a large way that we tend to link people in general with destruction, and so we remember Martin Vivian.
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AuthorWith a degree in Anthropology and an avid interest in history, Tim Christensen has lived in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for many years. He has no cell phone or television, but manages, when not chopping firewood or shoveling snow, to keep himself entertained with a library of several thousand books. Archives
July 2017
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Sequoia Parks Conservancy, the official 501(c)(3) nonprofit partner of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (National Park Service) and Lake Kaweah (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), uses tax-deductible contributions to support these parks.
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Sequoia Parks Conservancy
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