On his 1875 trip to study the Giant Sequoia, Muir made note of this "Sequoia scorched, Mariposa [Grove]. 1875." Muir lived in a time when most forest managers believed that any fire would destroy forests. However, for centuries before the indigenous people were removed from the Yosemite area in the 1850s, they used fire to manage the land and increase acorn harvests and "improve their hunting grounds" as Muir noted in My First Summer in the Sierra. (Shone Collection of Muiriana, Sequoia)

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Read King Sequoia: The Tree That Inspired a Nation, Created Our National Park System, and Changed the Way We Think about Nature, 2015 by William C. Tweed.