Article January 22, 1903 Issue

Giant Trees Eight Thousand Years Old

Popular Mechanics

SURVIVORS of the age o' mammoth tropical growth, probably eight thousand years ago, the big trees of California are the oldest and the largest living things upon the earth. Could they but talk our language, the secrets and mysteries of ages unknown to human history might be truthfully revealed. These same living trees, seemingly unnatural in their gigantic size, the source of amazement and bewilderment to travelers, have outlived all the nations of the earth up to the present time, and many of them now seem to but enjoying the prime of life.

The tallest of these great trees is four hundred and five feet high; the largest trunk measures one hundred and ten feet base circumference. The wood of the big trees might be put to many valuable usages from a mechanical standpoint, but they have considered too sacred for such degradation. Already they have been mutilated to a degree that is a stigma on American sense of reverence.

It has been said that a famous scientist spent fifteen years in excavation and calculation, and determined that Cheops built the great pyramids of Jeezeh 2170 B.C. There are trees now alive in California that had bark on them a foot. thick when Cheops' army of one hundred thousand began their thirty years' task.

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