A Historic Trek: The Amazing Honeymoon of W.F. Traughber and Nora Petree Traughber in 1905, Part VII

Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots - Blog Post #53

By Tonya Graham McQuade

American explorer, military leader, and politician John Charles

Frémont in front of the Fremont Tree, 1888.

Back in September of last year, I started a series of blog posts about the “historic honeymoon” my great grandparents, Frank and Nora Traughber, took back in 1905. My father had recently given me their old photo album, and I had decided to “dig in” to the story of their lives. After getting married in San Jose on August 17, 1905 (see this post about their wedding), they set off on a four-week honeymoon that took them throughout California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Utah before heading back to Missouri, where Frank (aka. Dr. William Francis Traughber) had his medical practice. Mike and I had been to many of those same places, so I wanted to see how their experiences might have compared to ours.

The first post in the honeymoon series talked about the time Frank and Nora spent in Del Monte (aka. Monterey), Pacific Grove, and Santa Cruz (see this link for more details and photos), but I barely touched on the Santa Cruz aspect of their trip. The photos in their scrapbook that were labeled “the big trees in Santa Cruz” were quite faded and discolored, and at the time they didn’t really capture my attention. These past few days, though, I started researching more about their time in Santa Cruz because I am working on expanding that blog series into a travelogue-style book that tells about their adventures. And guess what? Their story and photos got more interesting the more I learned.

Nora standing beside a giant Coastal Redwood  in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Frank playfully climbing up into a giant redwood – the two trunks 

have fused together through a process called inosculation. 

There are several photos of Frank and Nora in the album showing them among the big trees. So, the first question I had to ask was, where exactly did they go? Which big trees did they see? And how did they get there? Big Basin State Park had opened in 1902 as the first California State Park, so I knew that was a possibility, but it seemed like getting there from Monterey for an afternoon visit would have presented quite a challenge. Back in 1905, the main route to Big Basin was a rough, rutted wagon road that connected it to the nearby town of Boulder Creek, and with no railway option, visitors had to arrive by horse-drawn vehicles. The journey was a major undertaking, even for those living nearby.

The Santa Cruz & Felton Railroad crosses a trestle on the way to Big Tree Grove. 

Photo courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. [1]

I quickly figured out with a bit of online research that Frank and Nora would have had easy access to a very popular tourist attraction of their day: Welch Big Tree Grove in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Popularly called “Santa Cruz Big Trees,” thousands of visitors had toured the grove since it opened in 1867, with access made much easier by the opening of the first railway in 1875 (Big Basin never gained railway access). Visitors at Monterey’s Hotel Del Monte, where Frank and Nora were staying, could board the Southern Pacific Railroad at Del Monte station bound for Santa Cruz, then transfer to a local line, the Santa Cruz Big Trees & Pacific Railway, for the ride to Big Tree Station. Welch Big Tree Grove, later known as Santa Cruz County Big Trees Park after becoming a county park in 1930, operated until 1942, when it closed down due to World War II. It is now part of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. 

Entrance sign to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park near Felton.

Photo by Tonya McQuade.

Those who know me know I am a big fan of both state and national parks. My car, as well as my computer, bear stickers for each. I’m also extremely grateful to people like John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Stephen Mather, Charles Young, Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, Marjorie Stoneman, Thomas Moran, and so many more for the work they did to help preserve the trees, wildlife, and beauty of our national parks for posterity. 

The cover of my laptop clearly “advertises” my love of state and national parks.

I have also always loved walking among the towering Coastal Redwoods in places like Redwood National Park and Big Basin State Park, as well as the Giant Sequoias found further inland in places like Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove and Calaveras Big Trees State Park, so I wanted to know more about how the privately-owned Welch Big Tree Grove became Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. I also could not remember if I had actually walked through the specific Redwood Grove that Frank and Nora would have seen.

So yesterday, I suggested to Mike that we drive to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which is just thirty miles from our house, and go for a hike through the Redwood Grove. What follows includes some information from the research I did these past couple days, as well as additional information from the Visitors Center, the park map and brochure, the Redwood Grove Loop Trail Guide, and the book I purchased at the gift store: Historic Tales of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park - Big Tree Grove, by Deborah Osterberg.

The book I bought at the gift shop yesterday — it’s full  of interesting photos and information.

When Joseph Warren Welch, Sr. purchased this amazing grove in 1867, he fortunately saved it from the logging that would have likely been its fate. Many of the other big trees around it had already been cut down – either for their wood or to fuel the lime kilns that were big business in the Santa Cruz Mountains in those days (that was actually how the Cowell family earned much of their money). Only about 5 percent of all the old-growth redwoods that stood before 1949 are still standing.

Welch, instead, turned his grove into a tourist attraction, with a hotel, dining hall, cabins, and a dance pavilion. His wife Anna was a big motivation for this. In the photo below, Nora is standing in front of one of the Welch resort buildings, though I am not sure which one. The buildings, which stood near the Fremont Tree, have all since been removed.

Nora standing in front of one of the old resort buildings,

which have now been removed.

The Fremont Tree was one of the park’s biggest attractions. According to reports, Second Lieutenant John Charles Frémont of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers had visited this grove in the San Lorenzo Valley in 1846 with his scout, the legendary mountain man Kit Carson, on his third scientific expedition to the West. “The accounts of the great trees in the forest on the west slope of the mountain,” according to his memoirs, “had roused [his] curiosity,” so he wanted to see them for himself [2]. Frontiersman and early Santa Cruz Mountain pioneer Isaac Graham, who knew Kit Carson from his fur-trapping days and lived in a small logging settlement in the area, served as Frémont’s host.

Frémont had earned the nickname “the Pathfinder” due to his celebrated explorations, and his exciting descriptions of those travels (aided by his wife Jessie’s pen) had caused his accounts to become national bestsellers. His descriptions of the giant Coastal Redwoods first sparked skepticism and disbelief, then fascination and excitement, among his fans, and many wanted to see the big trees for themselves. California at the time was still under Mexican control, but that didn’t stop adventurous settlers from moving in.

Here I am, sort of copying Frank’s pose from above; these two trunks have fused together through a process called inosculation.

Graham had arrived in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1841, where he established a distillery at Rancho Zayante (near present-day Felton), one of the Mexican land grants in the area. He also built one of the first water-powered saw mills, along with Danish immigrant Peter Lassen. Graham built the road now known as Graham Hill Road, on which Mike and I drove yesterday when we visited Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, to transport his timber to the coast for shipment. Later, the railroad helped with that challenging task.

At Graham’s request, Frémont spent several days measuring the largest tree in the grove, and he found that it measured 275 feet in height and 15 feet in diameter, three feet above the base. [3] That tree later became known as “The Giant” and is still called that today. You can see a few views of it below in the photos I took yesterday.

This tree, known as "The Giant," is the one that Fremont measured. It stands 282 feet tall, over 17 feet wide, and weighs over 400 tons. It used to be even taller until part of the top of the tree broke off. Photo by Tonya McQuade.

Mike and I standing in front of “The Giant” on our recent excursion.

This large burl hangs off the side of The Giant; burls are natural,

knobby growths filled with dormant buds and can be a result of past damage,

like a fire, from which the tree has recovered. Photo by Tonya McQuade. 

When Welch and his family later owned the grove, it became a common practice for visitors to tack their notes and calling cards on “The Giant,” as well as on other neighboring trees, as seen below. This practice was eventually called out by a well-known conservationist, as you’ll soon discover.

This photo from Deborah Osterberg’s book describes the Giant

as wearing "a great corset of cards." [4]

Another nearby tree called the “Fremont Tree” was reputed to be where Frémont slept during his 1846 visit, for it had been hollowed out by fire, providing a cavity measuring approximately twelve by fifteen feet with a ceiling about twenty-six feet high. [5] An 1862 article in the Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel claimed that thirty people could stand inside of it. [6] When Frémont visited the grove again in 1888, he posed in front of the tree with his wife and daughter. Asked by a reporter whether that account was true, he reportedly said, “It’s a good story; let it stand,” according to the park brochure.

To see the rest of this post, head over to my website at this link ...

Endnotes:
1. Osterberg, Deborah. Historic Tales of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park: Big Trees Grove. History Press, 2020. Pg. 48.
2. Fremont, John Charles. Memoirs of My Life by John Charles Fremont. Vol. 1. Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Company, 1887. Hathi Trust Digital Library, babel.hathitrust.org. Pg. 457.
3. Osterberg, pg. 26.
4. Ibid, pg. 53.
5. Ibid, pg. 55.
6. Ibid, pg. 56.