Placer County Big Trees Grove

In keeping with the theme of my earlier trips this season I wandered up to the Placer County Big Trees Grove on the last weekend of July, which is not a big grove, actually nearly the smallest extant. It really has only six decent-sized sequoias growing in it. I didn't expect to find any large trees there; however, mostly I just figured if its a sequoia grove I might as well check the grove out, if only for thoroughness.

The grove is only about 2 acres on a 160 acre recreation area in the Tahoe National Forest, and has a well marked path that goes by all of the sequoias within it. Its trail is only about a half mile long featuring a couple bridges and with very little altitude gain, so one of the easiest hikes to be found. There are bathrooms at the trailhead parking lot, and a couple picnic tables for those that would like to make a day of it and take a lunch along. 

The largest tree in the grove is the Pershing Tree with just over 10 feet diameter at breast height. It grows just uphill from the small stream that flows thru the center of the grove. The second largest tree is the Joffre Tree, which is smaller in diameter but taller, and lives almost in the streambed. Unfortunately, I could not get quite the height measurement noted in the informational plaques placed along the grove trail. The tallest measurement I could get for it from high ground was 244 feet. 

In addition to those two largest in the grove, there are four other sequoias of any size near to mature in the grove. Two of them are named W. B. Lardner and Douglas Haig, anchoring the ends of the row of three shown in the pics, and two are unnamed. However, with these four trees sizes being only about half of the largest two in the grove, they are noteworthy only because they are all that the grove has birthed in the last few hundred years (or since the big two, anyway). There are just a couple juvenile trees sprouting near to the stream also.

The dimensions I found on the Pershing tree are as follows:
Base Circumference:  46'
DBH:  10.25' 
Height:  225.5' 
Volume:  7,375 Cubic Feet

The dimensions I came up with for the Joffre are as follows:
Base Circumference:  45'
DBH:  9' 
Height:  244' 
Volume:  5,889 Cubic Feet

There are also two large fallen giants: the Roosevelt Log and one other unnamed one. They are thought to have come down in the great storms of 1861. These two large carcasses are each nearly ten feet in diameter at the base, so they must have been near contemporaries of the two largest still-living trees before their fall. 

Interestingly, all of the names for the trees in this grove belong to famous World War I figures. 

Below are some pics of the grove's largest tree, the Pershing.

The second-largest tree, the Joffre, is shown below.

The other four sequoias that you see in the grove are shown below. Three of them are lined up in a most orderly fashion, as sequoias that germinate all at once often do. The fourth is right next to the line.

And lastly, below are the recently fallen carcasses: two pictures of the Roosevelt Log and one of its contemporary peers.