Nelder Grove

Nelder Grove, formerly known as Fresno Grove when it was within a much larger 19th-century Fresno County, is a Giant sequoia grove located in the western Sierra Nevada within the Sierra National Forest, in Madera County, California.

The grove is a tract containing 54 mature Giant Sequoia (''Sequoiadendron giganteum'') trees, the largest concentration of giant sequoias in the Sierra National Forest. The grove also contains several points of historical interest. These include pioneer cabins and giant sequoia stumps left by 19th century loggers.

Four hundred mature sequoias lived in Nelder Grove before European Americans arrived. Since then, the population has seen several steep declines. Seventy percent of the mature trees were cut during the late 19th century timber era. The population stabilized under federal protection in the 20th century. Yet, many decades of fire exclusion would prove disastrous for the fire dependent ecosystem. In 2017, the Railroad Fire ignited a dense buildup of ladder fuels killing thirty-eight of the ninety-nine remaining giant sequoias. Today, only fifty-four mature specimens remain.

Ecology

Nelder Grove's montane forest is dominated by giant sequoia and second growth ponderosa pine (''P. ponderosa''), white fir (''Abies concolor''), and California incense-cedar (''Calocedrus decurrens'').

The sequoias in Nelder Grove have a low level of genetic diversity even within a paleoendemic species. This is despite the proximity to nearby Mariposa Grove for which there is no evidence of genetic exchange between demes. This limited genetic variation makes Nelder Grove especially susceptible to the impacts of climate change and an urgent priority for conservation efforts. Besides trees, the grove is also habitat for rare plants such as the mountain-lady slipper orchid and the veined water lichen.

Native animal species include black bear (''Ursus americanus''),
mule deer (''Odocoileus hemionus''), long-tailed weasel (''Neogale frenata''),
raccoon (''Procyon lotor''), gray squirrel (''Sciurus griseus''), chipmunk (''Neotamias minimus''), and flying squirrels (''Glaucomys sabrinus'').

History

Native people

Nelder Grove was seasonally occupied by the Nim and Miwok tribes as long as 15,000 years ago. Many other tribes also traversed the area on their trans-Sierra journeys including the Dumma, Heuchi, Chuckchansi, Chowchillas, Paiute, Kechayi, and Dalinchi. Mortar holes used to by the tribes to grind acorns into flour can be found throughout the area.

Exploration and naming

The conservationist Galen Clark was the first European American explorer to formally discover the grove in 1858. He designated the area Fresno Grove, as it was part of Fresno County at the time and included the headwaters of the Fresno River. In 1957, the discovery of a soldier's diary revealed that Galen Clark was not the first white man to witness the grove, as a small detachment of the Mariposa Battalion had briefly passed through the grove during the Mariposa War on April 19, 1851.

John Nelder

The grove is named for John A. Nelder, who was called by John Muir the "Hermit of the Fresno Forest," who later in life, had the appearance of a small, stooped man with a flowing white beard. Nelder came to California in 1849 as part of the California Gold Rush. After many ups and downs, Nelder retired as a miner, and in 1874, filed a homestead claim for within what would become Nelder Basin. In 1875, Nelder built a cabin near the grove's largest tree. Muir wrote about Nelder and the grove for The Atlantic Monthly in 1878, which was later included in his book ''Our National Parks'':

John Nelder was killed in 1889 when a fire consumed his cabin. His son inherited his estate and deeded it to the Madera Flume and Trading Company in 1892.

Timber era

The area was logged extensively from 1880 to 1892 by the Madera Flume and Trading Company. A total of 277 mature sequoias measuring over four feet in diameter were felled.
Many survived due to their sheer size, which made felling them difficult, and not worth the effort due to their limited commercial use. Most of the surrounding sugar pines, ponderosa pines, white firs, and incense-cedars were clearcut.

Logging in the grove was backbreaking work. Horse and oxen teams pulled heavy wagons of logs to the mill, aided only in later years by the invention and arrival of a Dolbeer single spool donkey. Because of insufficient water in the grove, a long gravity tramway was built to carry the lumber to the Soquel log flume where it traveled miles to the Madera lumber yards, before finally reaching a national market through the Southern Pacific Railroad.

By 1897, the area within a reasonable distance of the mill had been logged over, and the last sequoia in Nelder Grove was cut. The Madera Sugar Pine Company eventually exchanged the land to the United States Forest Service in 1928 which placed the grove under federal protection.

File:Nelder Grove Lumber Mill in 1881.jpg, The lumber mill at Nelder Grove around 1881.
File:Loggers and their families at Nelder Grove Mill.jpg, Loggers and their families.
File:Redwood Stump in Nelder Grove around 1881.jpg, A group portrait portrays the trees' remarkable scale.
File:Big_tree_felled_in_Fresno_Grove_(78_ft._circum.),_Fresno_Co.,_by_Soule,_John_P.,_1827-1904.jpg, A giant sequoia measuring in circumference felled in Nelder Grove.
File:Dolbeer Single-spool Donkey Rig.jpg, A state-of-the-art Dolbeer single spool donkey sometime after 1881.
File:Nelder Grove Tramway.jpg, The Nelder Grove Tramway.

Access

Nelder Grove is remote in comparison to nearby Mariposa Grove which is accessible by paved roads and shuttle buses. Visitors can reach Nelder Grove under ideal conditions within two hours from the Fresno area traveling north, or from Yosemite National Park, traveling south on Highway 41 to Road 632, also known as Sky Ranch Road. The dirt road leading into the grove is often muddy and rutted and blocked by deep snow in the winter months.

Hiking and Recreation

The Shadow of the Giants National Recreation Trail is a nature trail located in the grove of giant sequoias. It was constructed in 1965 and was officially designated as a National Recreation Trail in 1978. In 2015, the informative panels, bridges, and other improvements were destroyed by the Railroad Fire. As of 2022, the trail remains closed and is experiencing overgrowth of brush.

A Sierra National Forest campground is located at the Nelder Grove.

Structures and Buildings

Remnants of the area's logging days, including two restored cabins and replicas of cross-log and two-pole log chutes, are on display at the Nelder Grove interpretive center. The cabins were originally built in the late 1880s by pioneers at nearby Bildeo Meadow and were relocated to Nelder Grove in the 1980s as part of an effort funded by the National Historic Preservation Act. They are the second and third oldest cabins in the Sierra National Forest.

Noteworthy trees

Some of the trees found in the grove that are worthy of special note are:
* Nelder Tree: The largest tree in the grove is named for homesteader John Nelder who built a cabin near its base in 1875. Measuring it's the 22nd largest giant sequoia in the world.
*Bull Buck Tree: The Bull Buck is named after the felling foreman of the logging camp, or "boss of the woods." Once believed to be the world's second-largest tree, the Bull Buck measures 246 feet (75 m) tall with a ground-level circumference of 100 feet (30 m) but a relatively smaller volume of 27,383 cubic feet (775.4 m3), placing it 43rd on the list of largest giant sequoias. The tree is an estimated years old.
*Old Grandad Tree: A tremendously rugged tree atop a hill, the tree is dead and hollow at the top and bears four significant fire scars.
*Old Forester Tree: This tree is the tallest in the Nelder Grove campground area (at 299 ft.). The tree is named after Walter Puhn, who was a National Forest Supervisor in the 1960s.
*Big Ed Tree: This tree is named after Ed Zerlang, a Soquel Mill foreman. It was Ed's favorite giant sequoia, and can be reached today by a short trail.

Railroad Fire

In September 2017, the Railroad Fire burned through much of Nelder Grove killing 38 of the grove's 92 monarch trees and forcing the permanent closure of The Shadow of the Giants trail.

A variety of factors created wildfire behavior outside of what sequoias are adapted to, including the 2011–2017 California drought, the most extreme on historical record, which had contributed to extensive and unprecedented foliage dieback and other stress responses in giant sequoias. In addition, over a century of fire exclusion resulted in heavy surface fuel accumulation and significant understory vegetation that contributed to higher intensity burning.

The fire was anticipated by concerned forest monitors. As early as the 1960s, Madera County discussed a plan to acquire the grove to side-step federal limitations on timber cutting and prescribed burning in the Sierra National Forest. Talk continued for the next fifty years. But no major preventative measures were taken ahead of the Railroad Fire. "We'd better reduce the fuels, or we're going to lose this resource," warned Paul Rich, a retired 33-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service in 2006.

2017 09 10-17.28.15.034-CDT.jpg, Fire burning in Nelder Grove on September 10, 2017.
2017 09 03-14.43.02.115-CDT.jpg, Resource Advisors (READ) from the National Park Service apply fire-resistant wrap to a historic Bildeo cabin.
2017 09 07-09.59.28.283-CDT.jpg, Firefighters pose atop a giant sequoia stump.
Nelder Grove after the Railroad Fire - May 2019.jpg, Portions of Nelder Grove became a snag forest after exposure to high intensity wildfire.

The plentiful natural regeneration of seedlings is a source of optimism for other groves with large, severe burn scars.

Protection

In August 2022, the USDA began a hazardous fuel reduction program in Nelder Grove. Officials hope to build upon the success of wildfire prevention programs in nearby Mariposa Grove during the 2022 Washburn Fire.

See also

* List of giant sequoia groves
* Mariposa Grove - a nearby giant sequoia grove.

References

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Giant sequoia groves
Sierra National Forest
Protected areas of Madera County, California