Dave Dulitz stands beneath the towering arms of a giant sequoia and spreads his own arms in a wide arc. A 2,000 to 3,000 year-old grove of trees surrounds him. “Look around you,” he says. “Everything you see except these redwoods has been logged two or three times and you can’t tell it.”

     We are deep in Mountain Home Demonstration State Forest, located in the approximate center of Tulare County. The lush 4,800-acre public forest contains sequoia groves that, in 1875, John Muir called the very finest in the Sierra.

     When the first settlers arrived in the area in the early 1860s they grazed sheep, cattle, and hogs in the meadows and some set up sawmills and shingle mills. Redwood lumber was a valuable sales commodity at the time and the industry quickly grew.

     So did recreation. During the forest’s early settlement, several Central Valley grain farmers built small summer cabins in the area and other Valley residents soon followed. For years, six hundred to seven hundred visitors arrived each summer to spend extended vacations. In 1886, Andrew and Sarah Doty created the small resort community of Mountain Home and even more people came.

     Then hard times hit. During the 1890s the mills began to close. In 1907 the Central California Redwood Company sold the largest tract of timberland to the Hume-Bennett Lumber Company, and when that company went into bankruptcy the mortgage company put the land up for sale again. But there were no takers. For over twenty years the forest lay commercially idle while campers, hunters, and fishermen used the old logging roads, streams, millponds, and stock trails without restriction.

     The logging hiatus ended in 1930 after Donald “Dude” Sutch bought rights to cut fence posts from dead sequoia trees on the old Hume-Bennett acreage. Dude worked the forest deadfall until 1941, when efforts to sell the property began anew.

     The Michigan Trust Company owned the property at the time. Jack Brattin, the company’s executive who handled the property, had determined the land was no longer a good prospect for commercial usage, so he offered the entire 4,800 acres for sale to the Forest Service—only to be turned down. Undeterred, Jack decided to create a compelling reason for a public agency to buy it. He authorized Dude Sutch to start felling live sequoia trees and also brought in two commercial lumber companies to do the same.

     The ploy succeeded. Thousands of board feet of sequoias fell to axes and dynamite as recreationists, conservationists, newspapers, and over forty citizen groups and organizations set up a cry. Four years of haggling followed among the Forest Service, the State, and especially Arthur H. Drew, who heavily lobbied the state legislature as a representative of the Native Sons of the Golden West. Finally, the state capitulated. In 1946 the Mountain Home Demonstration State Forest was signed into law by then Governor Earl Warren and, amid much controversy, the State of California went into the forestry business.

     The act seemed necessary, in great part because the growing decimation of California’s forest lands was becoming an economic concern. Tourism, crucial watershed resources for agriculture, and the state’s ecological health were all being threatened. The Mountain Home Demonstration State Forest was created to address those concerns through scientific research and experimentation. It became the first of seven state forests, but remains unique as the only one dedicated to demonstrating the compatibility of recreation uses with timber growing and harvesting.

     Dave Dulitz, who was the forest’s manager for twenty-six years, sees it as far more than that. Following in the dedicated footsteps of Deputy State Forester Cecil E. Metcalf and previous manager Floyd Otter, Dave considers Mountain Home to be not only a mandated research facility, but also an educational opportunity.

     “It is a demonstration of cutting-edge forestry,” Dave says. “Trees are not cut for profit but to create funds for both recreation opportunities and better forest management.” The development of sustainable cutting practices; regeneration of the sequoias; implementation of tree planting, natural fertilization, and thinning techniques; creation of beneficial burn practices; the study of animal and human effects — all are part of the experimental studies of the forest. The findings are shared with other foresters and the public.

     As our group of visitors walks through the forest, we inhale the mixed aromas of vegetation, rich soil, and fresh air. We notice hundreds of tiny sequoia trees sprouting at the edge of our trail that we now know will need to be cleared. We hear birds and the ripple of water near a cleared meadow. Laughter and the high shrills of playing children drift from a historic campground. We explore a site of immense granite basins that one member of our group tells us, according to legend, are the grinding holes of an ancient tribe of giants. In hushed silence, we stop for three deer that cross our path. And, with every step, we feel the immensity, the inconceivable age of a pristine forest that supports our way of life.

     John Muir was right. This may be the finest sequoia forest in the Sierra. But today, because of the dedication of people with vision, it is even healthier, more beautiful, and open to our wonder than it was in John Muir’s day.

October, 2012