Kings Canyon National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada, in Fresno and Tulare Counties, California. Originally established in 1890 as General Grant National Park, the park was greatly expanded and renamed to Kings Canyon National Park on March 4, 1940. The park's namesake, Kings Canyon, is a rugged glacier-carved valley more than a mile (1,600 m) deep. Other natural features include multiple 14,000-foot (4,300 m) peaks, high mountain meadows, swift-flowing rivers, and some of the world's largest stands of giant sequoia trees. Kings Canyon is north of and contiguous with Sequoia National Park, and both parks are jointly administered by the National Park Service as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
Sequoia National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California. The park was established on September 25, 1890, and today protects 404,064 acres of forested mountainous terrain. Encompassing a vertical relief of nearly 13,000 feet (4,000 m), the park contains the highest point in the contiguous United States, Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 m) above sea level. The park is south of, and contiguous with, Kings Canyon National Park; both parks are administered by the National Park Service together as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. UNESCO designated the areas as Sequoia-Kings Canyon Biosphere Reserve in 1976.
The Giant Sequoia National Monument is a 328,000-acre (512 sq mi) U.S. National Monument located in the southern Sierra Nevada in eastern central California. It is administered by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Sequoia National Forest and includes 38 of the 39 Giant Sequoia groves that are located in the Sequoia National Forest, about half of the sequoia groves currently in existence, including one of the ten largest Giant Sequoias, the Boole Tree, which is 269 feet (82 m) high with a base circumference of 112 feet (34 m). The forest covers 824 square miles (2,130 km2).
General Grant Grove, a section of the greater Kings Canyon National Park, was established by the U.S. Congress in 1890 and is located in Fresno County, California. The primary attraction of General Grant Grove is the giant sequoia trees that populate the grove. General Grant Grove's most well-known tree is called General Grant, which is 267 ft (81 m) tall and the third-largest known tree in the world. The General Grant tree is over 1,500 years old and is known as the United States' national Christmas tree. General Grant Grove consists of 154 acres (0.62 km2) and is geographically isolated from the rest of Kings Canyon National Park.
Sequoia National Forest is located in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains of California. The U.S. National Forest is named for the majestic Giant Sequoia trees which populate 38 distinct groves within the boundaries of the forest.
Moro Rock is a granite dome rock formation in Sequoia National Park, California, United States. It is located in the center of the park, at the head of Moro Creek, between Giant Forest and Crescent Meadow. A stairway, designed by the National Park Service and built in 1931, is cut into and poured onto the rock, so that visitors can hike to the top. The view from the rock encompasses much of the Park, including the Great Western Divide. Use of this trail is discouraged during thunderstorms and when it is snowing.
Mineral King is a subalpine glacial valley located in the southern part of Sequoia National Park, in the U.S. state of California. The valley lies at the headwaters of the East Fork of the Kaweah River, which rises at the eastern part of the valley and flows northwest. Accessed by a long and narrow winding road, the valley is mostly popular with backpackers and hikers.
The Kaweah River is a river draining the southern Sierra Nevada in Tulare County, California in the United States. Fed primarily by high elevation snowmelt along the Great Western Divide, the Kaweah begins as four forks in Sequoia National Park, where the watershed is noted for its alpine scenery and its dense concentrations of giant sequoias, the largest trees on Earth. It then flows in a southwest direction to Lake Kaweah – the only major reservoir on the river – and into the San Joaquin Valley, where it diverges into multiple channels across an alluvial plain around Visalia. With its Middle Fork headwaters starting at almost 13,000 feet (4,000 m) above sea level, the river has a vertical drop of nearly two and a half miles (4.0 km) on its short run to the San Joaquin Valley, making it one of the steepest river drainages in the United States. Although the main stem of the Kaweah is only 33.6 miles (54.1 km) long, its total length including headwaters and lower branches is nearly 100 miles (160 km).
The Giant Forest, famed for its giant sequoia trees, is within the United States' Sequoia National Park. This montane forest, situated at over 6,000 ft (1,800 m) above mean sea level in the western Sierra Nevada of California, covers an area of 1,880 acres (7.6 km2). The Giant Forest is the most accessible of all giant sequoia groves, as it has over 40 mi (64 km) of hiking trails.
Converse Basin Grove is a grove of giant sequoia trees in the Giant Sequoia National Monument in the Sierra Nevada, in Fresno County, California, 5 miles (8 km) north of General Grant Grove, just outside Kings Canyon National Park. Once home to the second-largest population of giant sequoias in the world, covering 4,600 acres (19 km2) acres, the grove was extensively logged by the Sanger Lumber Company at the turn of the 20th century. The clearcutting of 8,000 giant sequoias, many of which were over 2,000 years old, resulted in the destruction of the old-growth forest ecosystem.
The Giant Forest Lodge Historic District in Sequoia National Park includes the remnants of what was once an extensive National Park Service Rustic style tourist development for park visitors. Also known as Camp Sierra, the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in May 1978. Originally situated in the Giant Forest grove of giant sequoias, the district is notable for its nearly total demolition by the National Park Service to eliminate the impact of development on the Big Trees.
The Giant Forest Village–Camp Kaweah Historic District is located in Sequoia National Park. It is notable as one of two registered historic districts in the park that were largely demolished as part of National Park Service efforts to mitigate the impact of park visitor facilities on the park's giant sequoia groves. They were in a vernacular National Park Service Rustic and American Craftsman Bungalow style.
The Cattle Cabin is a one-room log cabin that was built in the Sierra Nevada by Hale D. Tharp and two partners in 1890, in present-day Sequoia National Park, California.
The Squatter's Cabin is the only remnant of the Kaweah Colony, a socialist utopian group established in the Sierra Nevada in the 1880s. Now located in Sequoia National Park, the one-room log structure is located at Huckleberry Meadow near the Giant Forest.
The Barton–Lackey Cabin, also known as the Barton Cattle Camp and the Lackey Cattle Camp, was built in 1910 in the Roaring River Canyon of what became Kings Canyon National Park in California. The cabin was a shelter for stockmen using the summer range in the upper Kings River Canyon summer range, at an elevation of 7400 feet. The cabin was once surrounded by a significant number of outbuildings, which have all disappeared.
Hale Dixon Tharp was a miner during the California Gold Rush, and the first non-Native American settler to enter Giant Forest, in what is now Sequoia National Park.
Alta Peak is in Sequoia National Park not far from Giant Forest. Before 1896, the mountain was known as Tharps Peak. By 1903 it was generally known by its current name and Alta Peak appears on the Tehipite quadrangle, USGS 30 minute topographic map of 1905, and was officially recognized by the Board on Geographic Names in 1928. The Sierra Club Bulletin noted that the name Alta Peak was "euphonious". A meadow on its southern slope had long been known as Alta Meadow. A rocky outcrop, 0.5 miles (0.8 km) southwest of the summit, is now known as Tharps Rock. Hale Tharp was the first euro-American to explore the Giant Forest area. His summer camp, a hollowed out Sequoia log near Crescent Meadow known as Tharp's Log, is popular with park visitors.
Balch Park is a county park in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains of California that features a grove of Giant Sequoia trees. It also has archaeological sites relating to the early Native Americans of the area, and to the late 19th- and early 20th-century logging industry that cut down many of the big trees in the area.
The Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks is the consolidated management structure for Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park in California. The two parks have been jointly administered since 1943. They have a combined size of 1,353 square miles (3,500 km2). It was designated the UNESCO Sequoia-Kings Canyon Biosphere Reserve in 1976.
The Pioneer Cabin Tree, also known as The Tunnel Tree, was a giant sequoia in Calaveras Big Trees State Park, California. It was considered one of the U.S.'s most famous trees, and drew thousands of visitors annually. It was estimated to have been more than 1,000 years old, and measured 33 feet (10 m) in diameter; its exact age and height were not known. The tree was topped before 1859. It fell and shattered during a storm on January 8, 2017.
