Sequoia National Park’s Redwood Meadow Ranger Station, built in 1938-1939, is a virtual twin of the park’s Hockett Meadow Ranger Station built in 1934. Constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps to serve as ranger residences and headquarters, these classic stations stand about 20 miles apart. Both are located on significant backcountry trails and adjoin fine meadows for pasturing pack and riding stock.
In 1938 Redwood Meadow was considered a strategically important site for such a facility. Park planners at the time could not foresee the forces that in just a few years would change that view.
Both of these handsome, well-maintained structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They are prime examples of iconic National Park Service rustic architecture, embodying its philosophy of harmonizing buildings with their environment by using local natural materials and avoiding an overly smooth, too-finished appearance. While reflecting the look of local pioneer structures, they admirably display the skilled craftsmanship of the workers who built them during the Depression under the national CCC program.
Both stations were preceded by smaller, simpler buildings. The original Hockett station was built in 1906 to protect the park’s southern boundary area. There, before the Park was established, the lush meadows of the Hockett Plateau were grazed by many thousands of sheep as part of a major Valley rancher’s summer mountain operations.
Redwood Meadow did not become part of Sequoia National Park until 1926, when Congress more than doubled the Park’s acreage. For decades before that time, cattleman James Lake Hamilton drove livestock from his Yokohl Valley ranch to use the meadow as summer pasture.
Hamilton had a silver claim in Mineral King in 1874, and he was one of the first cattlemen to range his animals in the mountain meadows on a continuing basis. He acquired ownership of this prime seasonal grazing land via the 1850 Federal Swamp and Overflow Lands Act, which gave the states title to all lands within their boundaries that would require drainage or levees in order to be cultivated. Once surveyed by their respective counties, and their surveys approved by the Surveyor General, these lands could be sold by the states.
Thus, Hamilton was able to buy Redwood, Quaking Aspen, and Wet meadows out of the public domain. When the surrounding Sierra Forest Reserve was established in 1893 (and became Sequoia National Forest in 1908), he retained the right to take his cattle through the forest to graze his private inholdings at the head of the Middle Fork of the Kaweah. To support his summer livestock operations, he erected several rustic buildings in the area, one of which became the original Redwood Meadow Ranger Station.
In 1916, the National Park Service was founded and took over the administration of Sequoia and General Grant national parks. The Service’s first director (1916-1929) was Stephen T. Mather. Among Mather’s goals was his determination to eliminate as many of the private land inholdings as possible (since the parks’ mission was to be for all the people to enjoy).
He was also intent on greatly expanding Sequoia National Park. Additionally he declared that scenery and significant objects were to be preserved for the public, while cutting trees, grazing cattle, and constructing roads and buildings were to be permitted only if absolutely necessary.
Mather used his own funds and secured donations from other wealthy individuals and from organizations such as the National Geographic Society and the Tulare County Board of Trade to buy privately-held land not only inside the existing park boundary, but also in the area where he hoped to expand Sequoia. These parcels included Redwood, Wet, and Funston meadows.
Thus, by the time President Calvin Coolidge signed the bill that greatly enlarged the park in July, 1926, Jim Hamilton had already sold his meadow inholdings. The Sierra Club held title to the property until turning it over to the park after its expansion.
Redwood Meadow’s location and resources were deemed strategic to Sequoia National Park at that time when there were only two roads into the park, one ending at Giant Forest, the other at Mineral King Access to the park’s vast backcountry for rangers, recreationists, trail crews, and fire fighters was by a network of trails, and Redwood Meadow was mid-way between Giant Forest and Mineral King on the trail system.
It was also a key stop on the main trail from Giant Forest to the Kern River country and Mt. Whitney, via Black Rock Pass. And, of course, its namesake redwoods (giant sequoias), thriving in the mixed conifer forest surrounding the meadow, were a major attraction.
In those days, most people traveled the trails on horseback, with pack mules carrying their equipment and supplies. Therefore, Redwood Meadow’s excellent forage for stock was also strategically important. Additionally, some of Hamilton’s buildings were still there to be used, including a small rustic cabin that became Sequoia’s original Redwood Meadow Ranger Station.
In the late 1930s, the park decided to take advantage of the Civilian Conservation Corps program to replace Hamilton’s ramshackle old cabin with a considerably better structure and to add a barn to store supplies, equipment, and tack for horses and mules. To save time and money, the design for the Hockett Meadow ranger station and barn built in 1934 was used for Redwood’s facilities.
Thus, Redwood’s cabin measures 23 x 33 feet, its barn 17 x 26 feet. Their walls are made of peeled pine and fir logs, log rafters support their gable roofs covered with shakes, and a central stone chimney ventilates the cabin’s wood-burning cooking range.
Redwood cabin’s 7′ x 12′ porch is just like Hockett’s except its floor is wooden, while Hockett’s is stone. And at Redwood the cabin walls rest on a foundation of big blocks of giant sequoia wood, while Hockett’s foundation is concrete veneered with stone. Redwood’s interior includes two bedrooms, a combination living room/kitchen, and a bathroom, while Hockett’s bathroom has always been an outhouse (and an outdoor shower). Both cabins’ interior rooms are finished with plywood paneling.
Redwood’s barn stands just across the Redwood Meadow Trail from the ranger station, inside a fenced pasture. Its interior, like Hockett’s, is finished with 3/8″ x 4″ tongue and groove lumber. All these buildings were constructed by CCC workers using mostly native materials harvested from their sites, although the cut lumber, including that for the floors and ceilings, was packed in. Redwood’s ranger residence was built during the summers of 1938 and 1939, its barn in 1939-1941.
Ironically, soon after the new Redwood Meadow facilities were completed, backcountry visitation dropped drastically as the U.S. entered World War II. After the war, backpacking gradually began to replace horse packing, and many hikers preferred the “Cadillac” High Sierra Trail route — completed in 1932 — from Giant Forest to the Kern River Canyon, because it crossed the Great Western Divide via Kaweah Gap, well over a thousand feet lower than Black Rock Pass.
Backpackers also preferred Bearpaw Meadow over Redwood for their first camping site heading east, since it was directly on the High Sierra Trail at 7800′ in elevation and offered “full-service” camping at Bearpaw High Sierra Camp. In the 1950s and ’60s, radical advances in the design of backpacks and related equipment, along with the use of new materials and significant reductions in weight, drove a backpacking boom, and stock and foot traffic to Redwood Meadow continued to decline.
As a result, in 1960, Redwood Meadow Ranger Station was demoted. The Park Service built a modern A-frame ranger station (since razed and replaced) at Bearpaw and made it the headquarters of the upper Middle Fork’s backcountry ranger.
Since then, Redwood Meadow Ranger Station is periodically patrolled by the Bearpaw ranger and serves primarily as a base for backcountry trail crews. Their horses and mules graze the verdant meadow, the barn holds their equipment and supplies, and the classic cabin accommodates the crews.
Redwood’s “demotion,” however, can be a real plus for backpackers and equestrians wishing to experience the magnificence of a beautiful giant sequoia grove much as visitors could in the past, without the crowds, the noise, and the developments for comfort and convenience that so often characterize these very special places today.
Those prepared to hike or ride a horse about 13 fairly strenuous miles each way can camp under the stars in the stillness of the sequoias near the historic Redwood Meadow Station. Mid-week in the shoulder seasons, you might even have this splendid, remote grove of Big Trees all to yourself.*
*Be sure to check trail and camping conditions before you go: in spring, high water from snow melt may make stream crossings difficult; in summer and fall, water sources may be dry at Redwood Meadow.
May, 2020
Hamilton Lakes and Hamilton Creek are named for James Hamilton. He stocked the naturally fish–less lakes: “Thinking it was a real shame that no fish were available in these lakes . . . for food and sport while they were there, he and his brother-in-law, John Taylor of Three Rivers, devised the plan to catch fish in Big Arroyo Creek, put them into milk tanks, carry the tanks on their backs up the steep grade to the lakes and turn the fish loose in these lake waters. . . . Hamilton Lakes went through several fish stages. First, there were no fish in the lakes. . . . Each year the catch would get better and finally . . . there were so many fish in the lakes that a fisherman was forced to worm his hook while standing behind a tree.” — Rod Homer, 2008
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