Chapter Four:
Parks and Forests: Protection Begins (1885-1916)
(continued)
While the secretary of the interior, the Land Office,
and federal court system debated the future of the Kaweah Colony, the
U.S. Army prepared to assume responsibility for the physical protection
of the new national parks. On May 14, 1891, the fifty-eight men of Troop
K, Fourth Cavalry, under the command of Captain Joseph H. Dorst, rode
out of the Presidio of San Francisco, crossed the San Francisco Bay by
ferry to Oakland, and boarded a Southern Pacific train for Tulare
County. On the evening of the sixteenth, the troops, traveling with
sixty horses and twenty mules, arrived at the western boundary of
Sequoia National Park, above Three Rivers. There they came face to face
with a myriad of problems.
Dorst brought to the assignment nearly twenty years
of military experience. An 1873 graduate of West Point, he had spent
fourteen years in the field during the Indian Wars, mostly in the
Southwest. During the last years of the 1880s he returned to West Point
as a cavalry instructor. Assigned in 1890 to the Fourth Cavalry in San
Francisco, Dorst now faced a new and distinctive
challengeprotection of America's second national park.
Dorst's first problem was to locate the new Sequoia
National Park, and tiny General Grant National Park as well, and to
develop plans for policing the tracts. The winter had been relatively
wet and much of Sequoia Park remained snow-covered when Dorst and his
troops arrived. He soon discovered that two roads entered
Sequoiathe 1879 wagon road to Mineral King and the recently built
Colony Mill Road ending at the temporary sawmill several miles west of
Giant Forest. While the Colony Road led to nothing but the now-closed
mill, the Mineral King Road, despite its difficult grades, led to an
area that had become a significant summer resort. Since most people
entering the new park would do so via the Mineral King Road, Dorst
focused his initial interest on this area, even though the new park did
not include Mineral King Valley itself. From a temporary camp at Red
Hill, just above Three Rivers, Dorst sent troops to assist the county in
repairing winter damage to the roadway. On June 7 he entered Mineral
King Valley, although the melting snowpack prevented establishment of a
permanent camp there until June 29.
Once established on the ground, Dorst turned to
exploring the rugged reaches of the new reservation. Almost before he
could start, however, he ran into the problem that would dominate his
first summer in the parkthe Kaweah Colony's attempt to cut
sequoias at Atwell's Mill. Arrested and convicted for their efforts to
cut trees at Colony Mill, the determined remnants of the colony
regrouped after the trial in Los Angeles. On May 1, barely two weeks
after the end of the trial, they signed a one-year lease allowing them
to log on the 160-acre Atwell Tract along the Mineral King Road. [26] Logging had begun among the sequoias at
Atwell's Mill during the last days of the Mineral King silver rush, but
the mill never really produced much owing to its remote location. Now,
under the leadership of Irwin Barnard, who negotiated the lease for the
remaining colonists, another attempt was to be made to make Atwell's
Mill profitable. At risk was the existence of the colony itself, for
since the loss of their Giant Forest lands the whole enterprise had
fallen into doubt. In the way stood Captain Dorst and the U.S. Army,
reluctant agents of the new and still vague national park idea.
On the scene again was Congressman Vandever's man,
General Land Office Special Agent Andrew Cauldwell. Cauldwell learned of
the colony's lease of Atwell's about June 1, while he was looking into
the organization of the new Yosemite National Park. On June 12,
Cauldwell talked with Dorst at his Mineral King camp. Cauldwell told
Dorst that under the rules and regulations the secretary of the interior
had decreed for the park the previous fall, the felling of standing
timber, even on patented land, should not be allowed. According to
Cauldwell this was the rule that the army was enforcing in Yosemite. [27] Cauldwell had already requested
clarification on this issue from the secretary, when he first reported
the potential conflict. Two weeks later the commissioner of the General
Land Office told the secretary's office that, as private land, Atwell's
Tract was not subject to the rules promulgated for Sequoia National
Park. [28] The problem, however, was that
like most other officials in pre-air-conditioned Washington, D.C., the
secretary had left the city for a prolonged summer vacation. Hence, the
commissioner's recommendation did not receive immediate attention. The
secretary's office did warn Cauldwell, however, to take no action at
Atwell's until the secretary returned. [29]
Though the interior secretary was on vacation, the Kaweah colonists were
not. After Dorst found several trees freshly cut at Atwell's Mill on
June 18, he sought the foreman, a Mr. Purdy, and told him that until he
received answers to the questions he had sent to Washington, Purdy was
not to cut any trees in Sequoia National Park, even on patented land.
Purdy strongly objected both to the order and to the fact that it was
coming from a military officer. Dorst explained that the order was based
on a cautious reading of the secretary's rules for the new park and that
he was serving as acting superintendent of Sequoia National Park, a
civilian office, not as an agent of the War Department. Purdy politely
thanked him for the explanation and told him that he did not intend to
comply. Alone and unarmed, Dorst left the scene, heading for Visalia
where he hoped to find Cauldwell and make some sense of the escalating
situation. [30]
The following day, June 19, at Dorst's request,
Lieutenant J. E. Nolan visited Atwell's Mill. Nolan found Purdy, and
Purdy denied being told by Dorst not to log; for spite he added that if
he had been told such a thing he would not obey. Nolan renewed Dorst's
order not to cut trees. The next day Nolan returned to the mill, where
Irwin Barnard presented him with a written statement strongly protesting
the illegality of Dorst's order. The colony would sue, if necessary, to
carry out their legal rights, he threatened. [31] Meanwhile, Dorst proceeded to Visalia,
where he failed to locate Cauldwell, but did find the secretary's
telegram of June 16, warning Cauldwell to take no action until he
received further instructions. [32]
On the stage back to Three Rivers from Visalia, Dorst
met Barnard, and he told the colonist of the secretary's telegram, which
seemed not to threaten the colonists' interests. For the next week,
believing that the situation was resolved, Dorst turned his attention to
other matters. Then, in early July, he received a long-delayed response
to his initial request for clarification on this issue. This letter,
from the acting secretary of the interior, instructed Dorst to prevent
destruction of the "great trees" in the park. Confused, he telegramed
Washington. Which instruction from the Department of the Interior was he
to follow? Should he take no action or should be protect the trees
aggressively? [33] On July 9, Acting
Secretary of the Interior George Chandler telegramed an answer: "You
will not permit the cutting of any timber within the park until further
orders."
Dorst's military sense of duty expressed itself
clearly in the letter he had hand-delivered to Irwin Barnard as soon as
he received the July 9 telegram:
In reply to a question of mine addressed to the
Secretary of the Interior, concerning the cutting of timber at Atwell's
Mill, I have received a telegram of which the enclosed is a copy. You
will see that I am directed not to permit the cutting of timber within
the park until further orders. I have the honor to request therefore
that you will cause the cutting of timber to be discontinued on the
tract of land in the vicinity of Atwell's Mill, which you have leased or
claim to control, for I am informed that all that land lies with the
limits of the park.
On July 15 Dorst visited the mill to see if his
instructions had been carried out. Barnard was present and told Dorst
that he would cease only under threat of direct force or court
injunction. The situation was getting completely out of hand. [34]
Nearly half the summer had now passed and the
controversy over the colony's activities at Atwell's Mill had thus far
prevented Dorst from undertaking any serious work in the remainder of
the two new parks. Because the mountain terrain was so poorly known,
Dorst's commanding general had authorized him to hire a civilian guide
for no more than four weeks to help explore the new reservations. During
the lull before Chandler's telegram arrived, Dorst had hired a guide.
Now, with the Atwell's situation heating up again, one of the four weeks
of the guide's time had already been wasted. Determined to see the rest
of the two parks, Dorst prepared to leave Mineral King for the Giant
Forest area on July 18, only to have the colonists purposefully fell a
tree in front of one of his soldiers on the seventeenth. Apparently, the
angry socialists had gone so far as to cut a young sequoia nearly
through, and then wait to fell it until a soldier came by. Dorst sent a
corporal and several troops to the mill while he stubbornly took most of
his troops north over Timber Gap toward Giant Forest. The scouting party
sent to the mill reported that no trees had been cut, and Dorst
continued his exploration of Paradise Ridge. By the morning of the
twenty-first his party had worked its way down to Red Hill, on the lower
Mineral King Road. There news arrived that the colonists had cut more
trees, and Dorst ordered Lieutenant Nolan and a dozen troops to proceed
up the road to Atwell's Mill to investigate. Just before Nolan left for
Atwell's, Dorst received a telegram from Cauldwell which told him to
"carry out the orders of the Secretary." [35]
Early in the evening of the twenty-first, after a
blistering hot eighteen-mile ride, Nolan and his troops arrived at
Atwell's Mill. Under strict orders to avoid violence, Nolan met briefly
with Barnard, who told him that the colonists would cease logging only
if physically forced. Worried, Nolan took his troops to camp a half-mile
away for the night. The next morning, Nolan's troops returned to
Atwell's to be met by thirty colonists armed with axes, and a deputy
sheriff who threatened to arrest them if they interfered with the
logging. Sensing that the situation was totally out of hand, Nolan again
withdrew and took his men back down the long hot ride to Red Hill, where
he reported to Dorst. Frustrated that his exploration time was being
lost, Dorst nevertheless ordered his entire command back up the Mineral
King Road that same afternoon. Late in the afternoon, as they climbed
the steep, dusty road, they met Barnard coming down, heading for Visalia
to swear out warrants for the arrest of Nolan and Dorst. After an
inconclusive conversation, Barnard continued down the road. By midnight,
the troops were bivouacked at Nolan's camp near the mill; at dawn they
moved past the mill seeking a better campsite for the large party, and
as they passed the colonists dropped a tree they had readied for the
occasion. Dorst, bone tired and sick with a fever, ignored the
provocation and moved on up the road. [36]
The following morning, July 24, 1891, Dorst felt no
better, but he realized that he must act. On Dorst's orders, Nolan
returned to the mill, where he found angry colonists chopping away at
the trees. Several times he approached individuals, ordered them to
cease cutting, and then laid his hand on the logger. In each case the
colonists ignored the symbolic application of force. Again, Nolan
withdrew. Later the same day, however, Foreman Purdy entered Dorst's
camp and told him that all logging had been voluntarily stopped because
his men were so excited that nothing could be accomplished anyway.
Dorst, sensing an opportunity, ordered Nolan and all the troops who had
been directly involved at the mill to prepare to leave the next morning
for the northern portion of the park with the civilian guide. At least,
he hoped, that would make it difficult for the county sheriff to arrest
them. [37]
Lieutenant Nolan, with nineteen troops and a civilian
guide, left Mineral King on the morning of July 25. That same day Dorst
received a telegram from Cauldwell enclosing a message from
Washington:
It appears that Atwell's Mill is on private land. If
this is correct, instruct Captain Dorst to defer action on all patented
land until I can communicate with Secretary, now absent on his vacation,
and obtain his directions.
GEORGE CHANDLER
ACTING SECRETARY
Dorst forwarded a copy of the telegram to Barnard
together with the message that he would cease his interference with the
colony's activities at Atwell's Mill. [38]
With the unfortunate incident at Atwell's Mill
stabilized, Dorst was finally able to turn his attention to the two
national parks under his control. Between July 25 and August 9
Lieutenant Nolan's patrol made the first official visits of the U.S.
Army to the northern part of Sequoia and to General Grant National Park.
After his 207-mile journey, Nolan noted that the Giant Forest was the
most interesting part of the new park, yet the least visited, owing to
remoteness. Within the grove, Nolan wrote, were more than forty simple
cabins built by the colonists in their attempt to claim the land. At the
confluence of the Marble and Middle Forks Nolan recorded the presence of
squatter Jim Wolverton's cabin and gardens. A few miles downstream, just
inside the park, another squatter named Bonivie also had settled. [39]
While Nolan explored the north, Dorst sent out
several additional detachments of troops from his Mineral King camp.
Between July 18 and August 31, Sergeant Patrick Daugherty and his men
rode 970 miles patrolling the area around their camp at Zimmerman s
(Hockett) Meadow. [40] Another detachment
camped at Colony Mill to look after the Giant Forest and Grant Grove
country.
Early in August Andrew Cauldwell returned to the park
to inspect Dorst's efforts. On August 10 the two men visited Colony
Mill, where they met Colony Director Horace Taylor and told him to
remove the mill equipment, but not the cut lumber since that was the
property of the government. [41] Cauldwell
also visited Atwell's Mill where he reported that the colonists had
resumed cutting sequoias, although because of their inexperience they
were losing much of the wood to breakage. Cauldwell thought they were
operating at a loss. One hundred persons, he reported, had left the
colony in the past year. [42]
The troops remained in the vicinity of the parks
until the winter rains began on November 16. In his annual report Dorst
recommended that Sequoia Park be extended to the east to protect the Mt.
Whitney area, which was so heavily grazed that tourist parties could not
visit it, that the boundaries of the two parks be surveyed, and that
legal penalties be provided to support the parks' rules and regulations.
[43] Andrew Cauldwell resigned his position
as special agent, fraudulent land entries, on September 17. In a cover
letter attached to Cauldwell's resignation by the local congressman, W.
W. Bowers, Bowers complimented Cauldwell's work and summarized the
feelings they apparently shared about the ill-fated enterprise: "Suffice
it to say at this timethat this Colony Scheme is the most. .
.bald-face piece of villainy I ever knew ofand I intend to fully
to ventilate it." [44] Attached in the files
to Cauldwell's resignation was a note remarking that Cauldwell's only
recent project had been the Kaweah problem, and that it was now
resolved. [45]
In a way the "Kaweah problem" was resolved because
the colony was dying. Cauldwell's suspicion that their logging activity
at Atwell's Mill was unprofitable proved to be true, and the colonists
never succeeded in making a significant dent in the forests at Atwell's
Mill. In May 1892, when the time came for the colony to renew its annual
lease on the tract, the organization no longer formally existed. A
century later it is difficult to survey the story of the colony and its
demise without mixed feelings. Undoubtedly the logging of the Giant
Forest would have been a tragic mistake; certainly we are fortunate that
it survived intact as the center of a national park. Yet, in many ways
the colonistsa hard working and dedicated groupwere not
treated fairly. Their claims to the Giant Forest appear to have been
legally filed, and by the precedents of the time should have been
transferred to them. The road they built, which for many years served as
the main route into Sequoia National Park, was taken from them without
compensation. And certainly, their treatment at the hands of the army
during the summer of 1891 was unjustified by any legal doctrine. Why did
Andrew Cauldwell change his mind so completely about their efforts, and
what was his real role in their destruction? Why did Ventura Congressman
Vandever involve himself so deeply in the affair? What was the hidden
role of the Southern Pacific in the destruction of the colony? A century
later these questions are probably unanswerable and likely to remain
so.
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