The Great California Hoax

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.