The Yosemite National Park contains three groves of sequoias (s-kwoi´ås) , the big trees of California. One of the trees is 204 feet high and 292 in diameter. The one you see is not so large as that. The sequoias are of two species, the big trees and the redwoods. The big trees are the largest and oldest trees in America. Many of them are in the Sequoias National Park on the upper slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and in the General Grant National Park six miles distant. In these two parks are 1,660,000 sequoias. Twelve thousand of these are more than ten feet in diameter. Many of the largest ones have been named. There is a General Sherman tree, a General Grant tree, an Abraham Lincoln tree, a George Washington tree, and so on. It takes a long time to determine exactly the age of these trees. This is done by counting the rings from the heart to the bark. On one of the old, fallen trees, John Muir (mr), the naturalist, counted 4,000 rings. The oldest living thing in the world is the General Sherman tree. Because it is standing, it is impossible to count the rings, but it is probably 3,500 years old. In other words, it was a little bush 1,500 years before the time of Christ. It was a small sapling when the Pyramids of Egypt were built. The sequoias are not only big and old, but they are also stately. They are regularly formed, and the trunks do not have branches on them for the first 100 or 150 feet from the ground. Then great, stubby limbs shoot out from all sides. It is a cone-bearing tree, and its foliage is therefore feathery and very thick. Its bark is cinnamon-brown in color. Keystone ID: 5006 Note: All titles, descriptions, and location coordinates are from the original Keystone Slide documentation as supplied by the Keystone View Company. No text has been edited or changed.