18901776 Club
Harrison signs Sequoia into law, the nation's second national park
The bill protects the South Fork of the Kaweah, Garfield Grove, and Hockett Meadow from the loggers already at work in the southern Sierra.
Logging crews had been working the southern Sierra Nevada for three decades, and the giant sequoias standing in their path were not built to survive an axe. On September 25, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed legislation establishing Sequoia National Park, protecting the South Fork of the Kaweah River, Garfield Grove, and Hockett Meadow. It became the nation's second national park. Historians consider it one of the first anywhere created to protect a living organism rather than scenery alone…
