Show highway without a rival traveler in california can journey for many miles beneath majestic redwood trees that have flourished for thousands Thousand i of years I 1 doubt if there Is any highway in the world to match the beauty of the great redwood highway which california has built through the mountains and along the sea up toward her oregon frontier for two hundred miles you travel most of the time beneath redwoods which have the vertical majesty of the empire state buildings columns tind and a towering green dignity and simplicity which no man made building can rival they are immense the eye takes time to adjust to their height sometimes the rugged trunks stretch skyward for two hundred feet without a branch sometimes the branches almost touch the ground and they are abundant these are no lone trees relics of bygone age but whole forests of giants with few trees but redwood saplings in their shade the founders tree on the Dy dyerville erville flats feet high labeled the worlds tallest known tree seems little taller than its neighbors that founders tree dedicated to the founders of the save the red woods wooda league madison grant john C merriam and henry fairfield osborn two of them new yorkers and i one a citizen of washington D C hints part of the romance behind the chain of state redwood parks driving today through that chain of giant groves you have ro sense of it a mighty race in peril of destruction you feel only that redwoods have flourished her for thousands of years and still flourish but there was a time when logging was proceeding at such a pace that it seemed doubtful whether coming generations would ifould ever know what Cali fornias and americas biggest living things had bad been the save the redwoods league doused the dnton so thoroughly that even along the klamath river where the mountain walls walla are solid with redwood and the river Is full of dead redwood snags I 1 could hardly bring myself to feel that the indians using redwood for fuel were less than des ecra tors ard the national bank and movie house at scotia built ns nil greek temples with solid redwood logs for columns a cruel waste the Scot Sc tang of course had used the and most abundant wood of their neighborhood A few of the best groves even dl erectly beside the redwood rig hway are still in private hands ind and some day may yot yet be sacrificed to the value of board feet of lumber but most of these groves are state parks saved unless from fire forever you pass through the lane grove the mather grove the williams grove and other groves dedicated to heroes of the long ions fight and finally even through the call forkla sta state te feder aaion of clubs and the garden clubs of america groves bedl bated to other groups of warriors such names nt at first seem ludicrous they are of course no sillier than the bay which sir hubert dedicated to a patron of fits antarctic nights flights or the charles V bob mountains which admiral byrd first dedicated to a douht doubtful ful benefactor then erased from his maps they are close kin to virginia carolina and georgia names of our atlantic coast age tends lends dignity to the most violent eccentricities of grateful nomenclature when I 1 it does not simply forget them the big trees lead the mind back into the prehistoric past of california nia the giants were giants before columbus sighted american land some of them were titans when caesar ruled rome e for the redwood begins life violently then takes its time A fifty year old tree Is as big as an eastern veteran after its second century the he redwood grows slowly and the tree which may be twenty alve hundred years old today seems little vaster from the base thana than 0 tree a thousand years its junior the tall ferns ferna the and the little star flower bower and the flesh col ored western azalea and pink rhodo dendron which pe keeli elt out fahn from b beneath e the big trees along the K klamath 1 river cannot be much different from the ferns and forest flowers and shrubs which have been opening to the morning dews of california from time immemorial but beyond their own shade the big trees look ort on a C hangee changed pro prospect the indians still cut redwood to anke ohp dugout canoes by which they still |