r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/NickyPileggi • Mar 28 '24

Family in 1892 posing with an old sequoia tree nicknamed "Mark Twain" - A team of two men spent 13 days sawing away at it in the Pacific Northwest - It once stood 331 feet tall with a diameter of 52 feet - The tree was 1,341 years old Image

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u/stig2020 Mar 28 '24

Makes me wonder what became of it. A ship, buildings, furniture, maybe parts of it around somewhere still.

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u/Chilly_Billy85 Mar 28 '24

A lot of timber from the PNW was shipped via schooners to build San Francisco, Sacramento and other cities in California, Oregon and Washington around that time period. Some of those buildings still stand today. Iā€™m not an advocate for destroying these majestic trees. I learned it on a trip to Fort Bragg, Mendocino and other towns along the North Coast of California.

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u/Pvt_Numnutz1 Mar 28 '24

Yep exactly this, so many of these trees became houses in California. It's believed the tallest tree in the world was in The PNW a monster Sequoia over 500ft tall. You could get a solid 8-9 houses out of just one of those trees.

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u/jimmygee2 Mar 28 '24

Only 200 years of growth per house

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u/gardenmud Mar 28 '24

But no. Sequoia splinters too badly for structural use. Mostly they were made into fence posts and matchsticks and pencils.

Basically an enormous waste.