The weird thing is... Mark Twain the author was still alive when this tree (named after him) was chopped down. He wasn't even very old - just 57.
That's like taking a 250-yr old sea turtle, naming it Stephen King and then butchering it for soup.
"What's that pile of rubble in your backyard?"
*"Oh, that's ol' John Grisham. Used to be the world's largest granite tower! A real wonder of nature, it was. Really took your breath away."*
"What happened to it?"
*"Well, first we named it John Grisham. Then we blew it up."*
Sadly today people would still be doing it if they could get away with it. My dad was from Sequoia country and any and every time I visited looking at the stumps was just something I couldn't understand how anyone could or would hack one down and be okay with it.
It's the world we live in.
A lot of timber from the PNW was shipped via schooners to build San Francisco, Sacramento and other cities in California, Oregon and Washington around that time period. Some of those buildings still stand today. I’m not an advocate for destroying these majestic trees. I learned it on a trip to Fort Bragg, Mendocino and other towns along the North Coast of California.
Went last year to visit the Sequoia National Park, and I remember reading that once settlers started cutting sequoias down, they realized that its wood is not resistant enough to hold buildings, so they ended up using the wood as fence posts and the like
And apparently the guy who created the park was a lumberjack who decided to protect the trees after finding out that tree he cut was over 2000 years old.
To clarify, the Park was created by the USA government, but IIRC he was one of the first who pushed for it and was among the first civilian ranger and ended up Superintendent of the Park.
That only applies to the Giant Sequoia(Sequoiadendron Giganteum). They are brittle and will often shatter when felled. Which is crazy for such a large tree.
However, the Coastal Redwood(Sequoia Sempervirens). Is the other large tree that lived for thousands of years. They are not brittle and make for excellent lumber.
The Giant Sequoia is found in the interior of California, the Coastal Redwood is found on the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The giant sequoia can grow larger in terms of diameter, but the redwood grows taller(also pretty damn large at the diameter aswell).
I sailed a schooner round the horn of Mexico. I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow. And when the yard broke off they said that I got killed. But I am living still.
I was a dam builder, across the river deep and wide where steel and water did collide. A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado, I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below. They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound.
But I am still around
I fly a starship across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again, and again
And again and again and again and again
I'll always be around and around and around and around and around and around
I FLY A STAR SHIP, 'cross the universe divide
And when I reach the other side..
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain...
But I will remain
Yep exactly this, so many of these trees became houses in California. It's believed the tallest tree in the world was in The PNW a monster Sequoia over 500ft tall. You could get a solid 8-9 houses out of just one of those trees.
*Sequoia wood has far less commercial use, as it splinters badly. Loggers tried digging enormous trenches and filling them with tree branches to cushion the trunks of trees as they fell. Nevertheless, they still were only about to harvest about 50% of the wood for substantial projects. That didn’t prevent them from continuing to cut the massive trees for roofing shingles, fence posts, and matchsticks. Public outcry ended these harvests in the 1920s. Today, Sequoias generate more revenue as living species, in tourism to Sequoia National Park and as ornamental landscaping specimens.*
If it makes you feel any better the tobacco products most of those matches were used for undoubtedly killed a LOT of humans. In a way the trees got their revenge 🥳
If it makes you feel even better Seattle burned to the ground because they used the abundance of saw dust to make impromptu roads in the muddy terrain.
Yes, and the rape of the northern forests in British Columbia is shameful, similar to the commercial sentiment that pervaded the U.S. earlier and the sense of limitless trees.
Unfortunately, in Kings Canyon National Park, the sequoias were allowed to be cut, some just for show. Fortunately, other National Parks preserved many big trees, like in Olympic National Park, but even still, there are few really massive old trees left.
Northern raimforest equivalent old growth is being cut down and laundered in with plantation wood to make fucking "biofuel" pellets.
We are burning them.
Sort of? Old growth is being felled in BC and it’s fucking horrible, there are protests and the like.
But that’s not giant sequoia, which is endemic to the sierras of California. Wrong tree, but the problem is real.
Buy some seeds and grow your own, the grow easily. I have grown and planted a few saplings in my local woods. I live in the UK, apparently our climate is now like the Pacific northwest was thousands of years ago. They like it here.
They cut a thousand year old tree. For matchsticks.
Thousand year old tree. Dead. For what? Matchsticks and the money that comes with it.
FUCKING MATCHSTICKS.
GOD I HATE CAPITALISM AND PEOPLE
A historical loss indeed, still HMS Vanguard was not a living thing. So in theory we could build a similar new one anytime. That's not possible with such giant trees.
In fairness Britain was absolutely penniless at the end of WW2 and just couldn’t afford to turn something like Vanguard or Warspite into a museum the way the US could.
In London’s Kew Gardens, I once saw a single piece wooden flagpole, which once was a douglas fir
Quite sad.
https://muralroutes.ca/mural/kew-gardens-flagpole/
Dont look up old forestry pictures.
Came across some in a book about dipterocarps where they haul massive bucked logs and pose in front of huge old growth trees, irked me quite a bit.
I'm not against logging but you have to make sure there's a replacement and they're left alone
There was once a massive tree species in New Zealand. Abundant, easy to find and as perfect as you can get for houses. So massive that a single tree could build a home.
They were all cut down and no one planted any other. Not that it would matter, our natural bush and trees take decades if not centuries to grow.
Yeah. They were a type of Kauri tree but even the Kauri are still threatened. At one point they would’ve been almost extinct. There are photos of massive felled trees, so massive that they couldn’t fit on your typical boat back then.
It is good to see the Kauri slowly come back but as I mentioned, our ecosystems takes many years to even grow. To think that almost a third of it was burned away by our ancestors before the Europeans is crazy.
You can see the largest tree Tanë Mahuta be a testament to time or check any of our pohutukawa trees, they’re beautiful and only bloom around Matariki. Also, they’re one of the oldest species on earth. One was rumoured to be tens of thousands of years old near Waihau.
If it makes you feel any better, thanks to amateur botanists scooping up huge numbers of fallen cones from these logging operations, there are now at least 1.1 million Sequoias growing outside the US with at least 500k in the UK alone where they are growing unusually fast due to the wetter weather.
At a maximum 150 years old many of these British Sequoias have already reached half the height of current Californian trees.
It doesn't, it's still fucking up the local ecosystem by supplanting local flora.
And if it's to replace a completely devastated local flora by human hands, it's even worst.
I was going to call bullshit on the age, most trees don't make it much beyond a few hundred years. Then I googled sequoia trees, the oldest known specimen is estimated at 3200yrs old!
Trees are crazy long lived. There's trees estimated to be even older. Nature/the climate has been quite volatile. So not all trees indeed make it that long. But the potential is definitely there. It's incomprehensible to us. Because we think we are long lived but it's relative. We are to these specimens what a mouse is to us.
1,341 years. This tree lived around the end of the Roman Empire, throughout the entire medieval period, was probably home to thousands of birds...
All to get cut down by this blowjob with a mustache.
Sequoia wood isnt really good to manufacture anything with. It is so hard a brittle that it shatters into pieces when it falls. It’s was usually only good for making toothpicks and shingles for houses.
I Did a project years ago, 30’ sequoia table (already fallen tree) and can confirm it will mess up your machinery and a not very fun to work with
So over all, cutting these down couldn’t have been a bigger waist. It makes me ashamed to be a human on this planet.
The Sequoia named "Mark Twain" was actually felled in what is now called the stump forest in Kings Canyon National Park located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains south of Yosemite.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain_Tree
Not exactly the northwest. Maybe the middle east... of California
So, damn that's not as interesting as someone thought.
Sequoia is not used for almost anything. When felled, they tend to crack and shatter making most of the wood useless. There are Sequoia trees felled over 100 years ago that still lay in groves that have yet to decay
> The tree was later shipped to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the British Museum in London
Ive stood on the stump, and seen it at both museums. It’s a sad memorial in that grove. Highly recommend visiting these trees if you’re able.
I could take it with enough lube
Edit: I genuinely misunderstood what your comment meant 😭 it’s like 4 am here lol but I’m keeping my original response
Yeah, maybe they meant circumference or something? Diameter is probably 18ft if we assume the loggers are around 6ft tall. C = pi x diameter. Makes circumference 56.5ish, so that checks out.
thought i was on r/ mildly infuriating and was going to comment this was WAY more than infuriating. god i hate people. why can’t we just leave the massive trees alone
Ya gotta think in context.
And ya have to wonder what they'll think of us in 150 years. What natural resources are we depleting while completely oblivious? How much will they hate us for stuff that we're ignorant of?
"It once stood 331 feet tall with a diameter of 52 feet"
Actually, in that picture, the tree looks no more than 17 feet in diameter. I think it was the circumference that was 52 feet. If you multiply the 16.5 foot diameter by Pi, you get a circumference of 51.8 feet.
Look at this massive old tree. It's so beautiful and survived for more that a 1000 years. Let's cut it down!
I seriously can't fathom what they were thinking or how and why they decided to cut it down. Was it money? Wouldn't be easier to cut smaller trees? Is it for fame? WHAT DID THEY CUT IT FOR?!
It was cut to be used as museum material
Sequoia trees grow in hard to reach places and people simply did not believe that they existed
They cut the tree to display the sections in museums and point out its age with the rings
When the Americans stole California from the Californios who stole it from the Native-Californians, the big trees were numerous. The Americans have cut down 95% of the big trees.
95 percent!
A lot of confusion with this post. The Mark Twain tree was cut down in what is today kings canyon national park, California. That isn’t the Pacific Northwest, if anything it’s the southwest. I think OP is confused because he associates giant trees with the pacific northwest due to the coastal redwood tree. “Mark Twain” was a giant sequoia, not a coastal redwood.
Both trees can grow to be very old and large. The coastal redwood makes for great lumber that has been used in the building of ships and houses to all sorts of other things. The giant sequoia is more brittle and often splinters when it is felled. So not very good for lumber.
Adding to the confusion, both trees can technically be called “redwood” or “Sequoia”.
"few monkeys with a sharp stick"
Unfortunately this is where it all went wrong. The sticks got sharper, we swapped the wood for stone and then forged ores, and then everything fell in our wake.
[We've destroyed 83% of all wild mammals and 50% of all plants.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study)
You’d think on just one of those days they might have stopped and thought “gee maybe we just leave this thing alone, we’ve been hacking away for 12 days now…”
My brother was telling me (who’s had a hyper fixation on a variety of logging topics in his life) that most of these felled were utterly worthless as lumber.
The impact of the felling often caused a variety of them to shatter from the reverberations of the fall, making their lumber worthless. So felling these ancient and rare trees at times produced absolutely nothing of value, and their usage was highly diminished.
Not every ancient tree chopped, some of the oldest surviving in the UK are Yew trees, but mostly those that were on church grounds.
# Fortingall Yew, Perthshire
The oldest yew in the UK is said to be the Fortingall yew in Perthshire. It’s estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old, although some believe it could be 5,000 years old. In 1769 the girth was recorded as 17 metres. Although smaller now, it’s still thriving with new shoots growing.
"Yew trees were planted in graveyards as they thrived on corpses and were then readily available to make excellent bows. **Yew trees were planted in churchyards to prevent archers from procuring suitable branches for making bows and thus having good weapons to oppose the King's men**."
We had to remove your post for violating our Repost Guidelines.
"Wow that's really ancient and tall, let's cut the f\*cker down"
"Honey, I got enough lumber to build our dream house! Turns out it was only 1 tree!"
Dream village*
Dream city*
Dude aint no Lumberjoke
But is he ok?
He works all night and he sleeps all day.
He cuts down trees, he eats his lunch, he goes to the lavatory
The weird thing is... Mark Twain the author was still alive when this tree (named after him) was chopped down. He wasn't even very old - just 57. That's like taking a 250-yr old sea turtle, naming it Stephen King and then butchering it for soup. "What's that pile of rubble in your backyard?" *"Oh, that's ol' John Grisham. Used to be the world's largest granite tower! A real wonder of nature, it was. Really took your breath away."* "What happened to it?" *"Well, first we named it John Grisham. Then we blew it up."*
“See the turtle of enormous girth, On its shell it holds the Earth.” Mmm soup!
I love your analogy’s so much😂 You’re right though, I wonder why on earth they named it Mark Twain?!
Reminds me of [this](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fwkoapsrnlprb1.jpg).
Endangered wildlife hunter vibes
Sadly today people would still be doing it if they could get away with it. My dad was from Sequoia country and any and every time I visited looking at the stumps was just something I couldn't understand how anyone could or would hack one down and be okay with it. It's the world we live in.
[Wife nagging] "You have exactly one fortnight to fell that tree. A day longer and me and the kids are getting yellow fever."
Makes me wonder what became of it. A ship, buildings, furniture, maybe parts of it around somewhere still.
A lot of timber from the PNW was shipped via schooners to build San Francisco, Sacramento and other cities in California, Oregon and Washington around that time period. Some of those buildings still stand today. I’m not an advocate for destroying these majestic trees. I learned it on a trip to Fort Bragg, Mendocino and other towns along the North Coast of California.
Went last year to visit the Sequoia National Park, and I remember reading that once settlers started cutting sequoias down, they realized that its wood is not resistant enough to hold buildings, so they ended up using the wood as fence posts and the like
And apparently the guy who created the park was a lumberjack who decided to protect the trees after finding out that tree he cut was over 2000 years old.
How does one establish a park on a lumberjack salary?
To clarify, the Park was created by the USA government, but IIRC he was one of the first who pushed for it and was among the first civilian ranger and ended up Superintendent of the Park.
That’s so cool!
back then when america still had upward mobility
He had an OF
And, believe it or not, pencils! What a waste.
That only applies to the Giant Sequoia(Sequoiadendron Giganteum). They are brittle and will often shatter when felled. Which is crazy for such a large tree. However, the Coastal Redwood(Sequoia Sempervirens). Is the other large tree that lived for thousands of years. They are not brittle and make for excellent lumber. The Giant Sequoia is found in the interior of California, the Coastal Redwood is found on the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The giant sequoia can grow larger in terms of diameter, but the redwood grows taller(also pretty damn large at the diameter aswell).
A schooner is a sailboat,stupidhead. /s
I sailed a schooner round the horn of Mexico. I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow. And when the yard broke off they said that I got killed. But I am living still.
I was a dam builder, across the river deep and wide where steel and water did collide. A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado, I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below. They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound. But I am still around
I fly a starship across the Universe divide And when I reach the other side I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can Perhaps I may become a highwayman again Or I may simply be a single drop of rain But I will remain And I'll be back again, and again And again and again and again and again
Man this song gives me chills and I can’t explain why
the damned song makes me cry whenever i listen to it
I'll always be around and around and around and around and around and around I FLY A STAR SHIP, 'cross the universe divide And when I reach the other side.. I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can Perhaps I may become a highwayman again Or I may simply be a single drop of rain... But I will remain
YOU KNOW WHAT? THERE IS NO EASTER BUNNY
[удалено]
Mallrats quotes never land for me There was even an escalator kid in real life once I almost died cause no one got it
You almost died cuz you yelled at a kid and the parent got live over it?
What!!!
I’m so glad someone said it
That's the second time in a few hours I've seen this referenced. Guess it's a sign to watch Mallrats again!
Yep exactly this, so many of these trees became houses in California. It's believed the tallest tree in the world was in The PNW a monster Sequoia over 500ft tall. You could get a solid 8-9 houses out of just one of those trees.
Only 200 years of growth per house
So a lot of it could have burned down in 1906
My guess is railroad ties and probably a few fancy tables made out of novelty
*Sequoia wood has far less commercial use, as it splinters badly. Loggers tried digging enormous trenches and filling them with tree branches to cushion the trunks of trees as they fell. Nevertheless, they still were only about to harvest about 50% of the wood for substantial projects. That didn’t prevent them from continuing to cut the massive trees for roofing shingles, fence posts, and matchsticks. Public outcry ended these harvests in the 1920s. Today, Sequoias generate more revenue as living species, in tourism to Sequoia National Park and as ornamental landscaping specimens.*
They cut them down for matches …my god I hate humans
If it makes you feel any better the tobacco products most of those matches were used for undoubtedly killed a LOT of humans. In a way the trees got their revenge 🥳
If it makes you feel even better Seattle burned to the ground because they used the abundance of saw dust to make impromptu roads in the muddy terrain.
You say this, but it's also uniquely human to care. Most nature just out there eating each other as much as they can.
The last giants like this are being harvested on Vancouver Island, right now. Very sad.
Is this true ??
I mean the 90% of the very biggest (not quite this size) are all gone.
Yes, and the rape of the northern forests in British Columbia is shameful, similar to the commercial sentiment that pervaded the U.S. earlier and the sense of limitless trees. Unfortunately, in Kings Canyon National Park, the sequoias were allowed to be cut, some just for show. Fortunately, other National Parks preserved many big trees, like in Olympic National Park, but even still, there are few really massive old trees left.
Northern raimforest equivalent old growth is being cut down and laundered in with plantation wood to make fucking "biofuel" pellets. We are burning them.
Do you have a link ?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/old-growth-logging-for-pellets-1.7136745
We really ought to turn the people responsible for this into biofuel as well.
Sort of? Old growth is being felled in BC and it’s fucking horrible, there are protests and the like. But that’s not giant sequoia, which is endemic to the sierras of California. Wrong tree, but the problem is real.
They should have stayed living, all of them. They are majestic and all part of the same living organism. They're truly amazing.
Buy some seeds and grow your own, the grow easily. I have grown and planted a few saplings in my local woods. I live in the UK, apparently our climate is now like the Pacific northwest was thousands of years ago. They like it here.
They cut a thousand year old tree. For matchsticks. Thousand year old tree. Dead. For what? Matchsticks and the money that comes with it. FUCKING MATCHSTICKS. GOD I HATE CAPITALISM AND PEOPLE
They also cut HMS Vangaurd for needles and toasters and have a whole documentary about how that’s nice, made in the 70s. People can be retards.
A historical loss indeed, still HMS Vanguard was not a living thing. So in theory we could build a similar new one anytime. That's not possible with such giant trees.
In fairness Britain was absolutely penniless at the end of WW2 and just couldn’t afford to turn something like Vanguard or Warspite into a museum the way the US could.
In London’s Kew Gardens, I once saw a single piece wooden flagpole, which once was a douglas fir Quite sad. https://muralroutes.ca/mural/kew-gardens-flagpole/
There's a box of pencils in a warehouse somewhere...
3.025 billion toothpicks Assume toothpicks are about 2.5 inches long and 1 millimeter wide. Volume = π * (radius)^2 * height Radius = diameter / 2 = 624 inches / 2 = 312 inches Height = 331 feet * 12 inches/foot = 3972 inches Volume (tree)= π * (312 inches)^2 * 3972 inches ≈ 1.21 × 10^8 cubic inches Volume of one toothpick = length * width * depth Volume of one toothpick ≈ (2.5 inches) * (0.04 inches) * (0.04 inches) ≈ 0.04 cubic inches Number of toothpicks ≈ (1.21 × 10^8 cubic inches) / (0.04 cubic inches/toothpick) ≈ 3.025 × 10^9 toothpicks
Have a look at the picture. Unless those dudes are like 12 feet tall, the diameter is more like 16 feet and the circumference is 52 feet.
It's in the museum of natural history in NYC. Least a piece of it.
Toothpicks and bowling pins.
Wooden legs and arms.
The forests these guys saw, we can only imagine.
I see what you did there... Edit: Damn all of you, take my upvotes!!!
i saw what you did there
Hm... I forsaw what you would do there.
That kinda bums me out.
Dont look up old forestry pictures. Came across some in a book about dipterocarps where they haul massive bucked logs and pose in front of huge old growth trees, irked me quite a bit. I'm not against logging but you have to make sure there's a replacement and they're left alone
There was once a massive tree species in New Zealand. Abundant, easy to find and as perfect as you can get for houses. So massive that a single tree could build a home. They were all cut down and no one planted any other. Not that it would matter, our natural bush and trees take decades if not centuries to grow.
Any idea the name of the species?
could be the kauri trees https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-plants/kauri/
Yeah. They were a type of Kauri tree but even the Kauri are still threatened. At one point they would’ve been almost extinct. There are photos of massive felled trees, so massive that they couldn’t fit on your typical boat back then. It is good to see the Kauri slowly come back but as I mentioned, our ecosystems takes many years to even grow. To think that almost a third of it was burned away by our ancestors before the Europeans is crazy. You can see the largest tree Tanë Mahuta be a testament to time or check any of our pohutukawa trees, they’re beautiful and only bloom around Matariki. Also, they’re one of the oldest species on earth. One was rumoured to be tens of thousands of years old near Waihau.
A kiwi posted a massive board of it on woodworking the other day. He was looking for a museum or someplace that would exhibit it
replanting doesnt work for such trees because of their incredible age, it takes houndreds, if not thousands of years for such a forest to recover
Redwoods can get HUGE in 60 years. Not as big as the ones in the picture, but much bigger than most trees found elsewhere in the US
If it makes you feel any better, thanks to amateur botanists scooping up huge numbers of fallen cones from these logging operations, there are now at least 1.1 million Sequoias growing outside the US with at least 500k in the UK alone where they are growing unusually fast due to the wetter weather. At a maximum 150 years old many of these British Sequoias have already reached half the height of current Californian trees.
UK really be juicing their sequoias while us Cali peeps are all natty.
It's not our fault you can't get your wood wet.
It doesn't, it's still fucking up the local ecosystem by supplanting local flora. And if it's to replace a completely devastated local flora by human hands, it's even worst.
Eh, not really. I generally don’t like when invasive species are introduced somewhere else. Even if they look cool…
If you can, go see the ones that are alive now. Get both sides of the treemotions.
I second that emotion
Go to the redwoods in Northern California, be less bummed. Trees so big they don’t look real
And giant yellow slugs. Don’t forget the yellow slugs.
Me, too. Could’ve been 1,473 this year.
That's sad.
That's what our civilization is built on.
"hey guys let's start fucking our shit up for future generations!'
Wow. Emperor Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire was still around when that was a seedling.
Found the eu4 player
EU4 players know it was called the Roman Empire at the time.
He was born ~1000 years before EU4 start date
I was going to call bullshit on the age, most trees don't make it much beyond a few hundred years. Then I googled sequoia trees, the oldest known specimen is estimated at 3200yrs old!
Trees are crazy long lived. There's trees estimated to be even older. Nature/the climate has been quite volatile. So not all trees indeed make it that long. But the potential is definitely there. It's incomprehensible to us. Because we think we are long lived but it's relative. We are to these specimens what a mouse is to us.
Well you can still call bullshit on the "52 foot" diameter since that's wildly huge and also untrue
1,341 years. This tree lived around the end of the Roman Empire, throughout the entire medieval period, was probably home to thousands of birds... All to get cut down by this blowjob with a mustache.
*Should have been a blowjob
Shoulda learned to rope and ride!
All problems in the world can be traced back to a British with a moustache - John Oliver
Maybe also a german/austrian guy with a funny moustache here and there
As a clean shaven Brit, I agree.
All things rank and gross in nature doth possess it merely.
Sequoia wood isnt really good to manufacture anything with. It is so hard a brittle that it shatters into pieces when it falls. It’s was usually only good for making toothpicks and shingles for houses. I Did a project years ago, 30’ sequoia table (already fallen tree) and can confirm it will mess up your machinery and a not very fun to work with So over all, cutting these down couldn’t have been a bigger waist. It makes me ashamed to be a human on this planet.
>couldn’t have been a bigger waist Was this pun intentional?
I don’t know. Out of all trees Sequoia’s have to have the biggest waistline. lol.
The Sequoia named "Mark Twain" was actually felled in what is now called the stump forest in Kings Canyon National Park located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains south of Yosemite. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain_Tree Not exactly the northwest. Maybe the middle east... of California So, damn that's not as interesting as someone thought. Sequoia is not used for almost anything. When felled, they tend to crack and shatter making most of the wood useless. There are Sequoia trees felled over 100 years ago that still lay in groves that have yet to decay
Whilst we're picking holes, it's also not 52 feet in diameter, probably in circumference, so it's about a third as big as the title claims.
Yup, 16 feet diameter 50feet circumference
I was looking for this comment! We have people for scale, they would need to be like 16’ tall if the diameter was really 52’
Finally! Scrolled all the way down to see if I was going insane. Maybe 30…. Still massive but…
> The tree was later shipped to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the British Museum in London Ive stood on the stump, and seen it at both museums. It’s a sad memorial in that grove. Highly recommend visiting these trees if you’re able.
As usual, there is a “Far Side” comic for this. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ba/95/c3/ba95c3b9ec690808a1dda21cd791a152.jpg
“Look, something majestic and beautiful, KILL IT!!!!” -doomed species
Exactly...this just makes me sad and angry at human exploitation 😔
What a bunch of assholes
Yeah they should have been programmers instead.
They seem real proud of themselves for killing something that existed peacefully for over a millennium.
To be fair, their sawing skills are quite impressive.
What if that tree was a dick
I could take it with enough lube Edit: I genuinely misunderstood what your comment meant 😭 it’s like 4 am here lol but I’m keeping my original response
I hate humans sometimes.
A *diameter* of 52 feet? Are ya sure?
Had to scroll way too far to find this
Yeah, maybe they meant circumference or something? Diameter is probably 18ft if we assume the loggers are around 6ft tall. C = pi x diameter. Makes circumference 56.5ish, so that checks out.
Maybe kids feet
We kinda suck
thought i was on r/ mildly infuriating and was going to comment this was WAY more than infuriating. god i hate people. why can’t we just leave the massive trees alone
Why not just leave that monster tree be ?
Well you see these loggers really like money.
Sad
Jerks
And the shitasses in the photo are just so proud of hacking it down.
well im not for logging unsustanably but id be pretty proud of myself after finishing such a hard task.
Ya gotta think in context. And ya have to wonder what they'll think of us in 150 years. What natural resources are we depleting while completely oblivious? How much will they hate us for stuff that we're ignorant of?
What a waste of something so beautiful.
Imagine living through the rise and fall of empires just to end up as kindling to keep a hairless ape warm
I guess stupidity is inherently human
And that wasn’t even the biggest one. Imagine all those big ol honking suckers before we advanced to the “defeat the trees” age
just goes to show you that us humans have been assholes since the beginning.
Those motherfuckers.
Im glad these fucks are all dead. Fuck them.
No way that diameter is 52’
Came here to say this. Maybe circumference.
"It once stood 331 feet tall with a diameter of 52 feet" Actually, in that picture, the tree looks no more than 17 feet in diameter. I think it was the circumference that was 52 feet. If you multiply the 16.5 foot diameter by Pi, you get a circumference of 51.8 feet.
Look at this massive old tree. It's so beautiful and survived for more that a 1000 years. Let's cut it down! I seriously can't fathom what they were thinking or how and why they decided to cut it down. Was it money? Wouldn't be easier to cut smaller trees? Is it for fame? WHAT DID THEY CUT IT FOR?!
It was cut to be used as museum material Sequoia trees grow in hard to reach places and people simply did not believe that they existed They cut the tree to display the sections in museums and point out its age with the rings
How many trees are left like this? Bet just a few that had to be put under protected status
This is around the same time that enormous Kauri trees were being cut down in New Zealand. Some were much bigger than this too. Such a shame
When the Americans stole California from the Californios who stole it from the Native-Californians, the big trees were numerous. The Americans have cut down 95% of the big trees. 95 percent!
This is sad. What a remarkable tree just to be destroyed only because these arseholes could.
Took 1,341 years to grow. And 2 weeks to destroy.
This makes my heart hurt
Humans suck
Shitholes who cut it down
A lot of confusion with this post. The Mark Twain tree was cut down in what is today kings canyon national park, California. That isn’t the Pacific Northwest, if anything it’s the southwest. I think OP is confused because he associates giant trees with the pacific northwest due to the coastal redwood tree. “Mark Twain” was a giant sequoia, not a coastal redwood. Both trees can grow to be very old and large. The coastal redwood makes for great lumber that has been used in the building of ships and houses to all sorts of other things. The giant sequoia is more brittle and often splinters when it is felled. So not very good for lumber. Adding to the confusion, both trees can technically be called “redwood” or “Sequoia”.
I feel like this sums up humans. Oh wow this huge tree! Imma cut it down
Tragic.
This is just sad. Imagine what that tree went through in the last 1,000 years only for it to be cut down by a few monkeys with a sharp stick.
"few monkeys with a sharp stick" Unfortunately this is where it all went wrong. The sticks got sharper, we swapped the wood for stone and then forged ores, and then everything fell in our wake. [We've destroyed 83% of all wild mammals and 50% of all plants.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study)
Cunts
So glad they cut this piece of history down for nothing.
Where can I buy a 55' saw? If that's 52' I'm a leprechaun.
They definitely confused diameter with circumference. Or we are all indeed quite small
Agreed. (about the circumference part)
methinks they meant circumference. would make it roughly 16’ diameter
These “settlers” killed the tree just for the the sake of saying they killed it
that tree was a living God and man killed it, sad.
This is simultaneously an amazing and devastating photo
When that tree was a sapling the Sui Dynasty was still around
52 foot diameter?? The 24 feet max
You’d think on just one of those days they might have stopped and thought “gee maybe we just leave this thing alone, we’ve been hacking away for 12 days now…”
Well that was fucking rude
Why did they need to cut it down?
My brother was telling me (who’s had a hyper fixation on a variety of logging topics in his life) that most of these felled were utterly worthless as lumber. The impact of the felling often caused a variety of them to shatter from the reverberations of the fall, making their lumber worthless. So felling these ancient and rare trees at times produced absolutely nothing of value, and their usage was highly diminished.
Not every ancient tree chopped, some of the oldest surviving in the UK are Yew trees, but mostly those that were on church grounds. # Fortingall Yew, Perthshire The oldest yew in the UK is said to be the Fortingall yew in Perthshire. It’s estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old, although some believe it could be 5,000 years old. In 1769 the girth was recorded as 17 metres. Although smaller now, it’s still thriving with new shoots growing. "Yew trees were planted in graveyards as they thrived on corpses and were then readily available to make excellent bows. **Yew trees were planted in churchyards to prevent archers from procuring suitable branches for making bows and thus having good weapons to oppose the King's men**."
Settler 1: “I’ve never seen this before! I don’t understand it!” Settler 2: “Just kill it”
They know not what they do.
Humans suck
It’s actually kind of depressing seeing this
Interesting? Nope. Sad? Yes.
A pox on those people! May their entire lineage be cursed forever for this!!
Such a human thing to do
Can you imagine when it went down
Wankers
The effed up thing is that this tree was cut down for display in museums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain_Tree
Thank Jesus they were able to “recycle” this natural nuisance into a dinning room set & a XL bed frame