The Giant Forest is the name given the largest grove of sequoias, which
is more than a grove. It is a Brobdingnagian forest. Here is found the
General Sherman Tree, perhaps the oldest and largest living thing, 36.5
feet at its greatest diameter and 272.4 feet high. There are scores of
trees almost as large as the General Sherman, hundreds over 10 feet in
diameter, and many thousand from the seedling stage upward.
In his book, Our National Parks, John Muir says, "* * * I entered the
sublime wilderness of the Kaweah Basin. This part of the Sequoia belt
seemed to me the finest, and I then named it 'The Giant Forest.' It
extends, a magnificent growth of giants grouped in pure temple groves,
ranged in colonnades along the sides of meadows or scattered among the
other trees, from the granite headlands overlooking the hot foothills
and plains of the San Joaquin back to within a few miles of the old
glacier fountains at an elevation of 5,000 to 8,400 feet above the sea."
Giant Forest is also the name of the village beneath the sequoias where
the Giant Forest Lodge and the housekeeping and auto camps are situated.
Its summer population is about 3,000.