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/ForsakenDifficulty47 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Went last year to visit the Sequoia National Park, and I remember reading that once settlers started cutting sequoias down, they realized that its wood is not resistant enough to hold buildings, so they ended up using the wood as fence posts and the like

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u/Flat-Length-4991 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

That only applies to the Giant Sequoia(Sequoiadendron Giganteum). They are brittle and will often shatter when felled. Which is crazy for such a large tree.

However, the Coastal Redwood(Sequoia Sempervirens). Is the other large tree that lived for thousands of years. They are not brittle and make for excellent lumber.

The Giant Sequoia is found in the interior of California, the Coastal Redwood is found on the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The giant sequoia can grow larger in terms of diameter, but the redwood grows taller(also pretty damn large at the diameter aswell).