Sequoia Forest Restoration
As home to some of the largest and oldest trees in the world, it's our job to protect and nurture these living legends so that generations after us can enjoy the same beauty. We're working in conjunction with the National Park Service to safeguard our surroundings. To help with the sequoia forest restoration, the Giant Forest Restoration Project was created. The goal of this program is to restore the ecological health of the Giant Forest sequoia grove, home of the world's largest trees, and create opportunities for outstanding national park experiences.
Sequoia National Park is known best for Giant Forest, a setting of more than 8,000 colossal sequoia trees, including the largest of them all, the General Sherman Tree, weighing approximately 2.7 million pounds and believed to be around 2,100 years old.
The Giant Forest Village was constructed on and near the shallow roots of some of these sequoias in the early 1900s. In the last few years, all but a handful of the 300 buildings that once cluttered the sequoia forest grove have been removed, including cabins, restaurants, parking areas, and side roads. Because most of the development had been small cabins and not huge lodging complexes, the transformation from village to forest floor was fairly quick.
The remaining building, a historic market built in 1928 and designed by renowned architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood (The Ahwahnee® - Yosemite National Park; Bryce Canyon Lodge®; Grand Canyon Lodge® - North Rim), is now the Giant Forest Museum, opened to the public in July of 2001. After six years of planning, the Giant Forest Museum creates a new opportunity to see and learn about the sequoia forest with exhibits focused on sequoia ecology, covering the topic more thoroughly than ever before. The museum also forms the hub for a number of connecting trails, several of which have been re-graded and paved. As part of the sequoia forest restoration project, more wooden rails have been added and many existing paved trails have been resurfaced – allowing use of several over-used areas to be restricted so that they may be returned to their natural state.
