When you drive Avenue of the Giants, it seems like there's a new named grove around every bend. This seems weird until you understand the history of it, that literally these trees were saved a handful at a time, by individuals and small groups getting together to buy a tree or a small grove one by one as they could, only creating the critical mass with these incremental efforts elindelef [8:53 AM] So there's "Women's Club Grove" and all sorts of similar names all through the park elindelef [8:54 AM] Is a reminder for me of how small groups of individuals come together to make an enormous lasting difference.
"No Better Heritage Than Living Trees": Women's Clubs and Early Conservation in Humboldt County
www.savetheredwoods.org/…
- Bolling Grove, the League’s first memorial grove of redwoods. Stop #2 on the Avenue of the Giants auto tour. Paid respects at the plaque commemorating Colonel Raynal C. Bolling, the first U.S. high-ranking officer killed in World War 1. The 1921 photo of the dedication ceremony includes Arthur E. Connick, a League founder and future League Board president. It also includes Connick’s 3-year-old son Robert. Robert later became a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley and remains an Honorary Councilor of the League. Two of Arthur’s granddaughters, Sarah Connick and Peggy Coe Light, follow the family tradition of donating expertise, time, and financial support in their roles as League Directors; a grandson, Barry Connick Howard, is a League Councilor and Chairperson of the League’s Education Committee.
- Founder’s Grove, dedicated to the League’s Founders who refused to allow the wholesale destruction of the redwood forest to continue. We were munching lunch, facing the Dyerville Giant, a 200-year-old, 362-foot giant redwood that fell in a storm in March 1991. We chatted with a voluble Vietnam War veteran enjoying a walk with his service dog. He lives nearby and stopped to advise us to take one of his favorite hikes. He thanked the League for the fine maps and other interpretive information we provide. Then, after a pause and with emotion in his voice, he thanked the League for preserving the redwood forest for its power to nurture and healdamaged soldiers and others.
