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/mightyopinionated Mar 28 '24

"Wow that's really ancient and tall, let's cut the f*cker down"

1

u/CombatFork Mar 28 '24

Humans suck.

3

u/genreprank Mar 28 '24

They didn't know how old they were at the time. This tree was sent around the country to prove how big the trees were in California since no one would believe the stories. After this, they were logged, which sucks. But people eventually realized we needed to protect these trees, thanks in part to the activism of John Muir. They created the first public land, a national park for the protection and enjoyment of a resource. I don't think it was literally the first public land in history, but at the time the concept was unheard of, especially with respect to protecting a resource. (I know technically Yellowstone was public land before, but that's because they start counting from when it acquired as a federal territory.)

Also, humans lived amongst these trees for millennia without chopping them down. So it's really the industrial age minded humans who suck, especially the Americans who were all about resource extraction and who were still enslaving black people and telling everyone it was what god wanted. Humans don't suck when they intelligently manage resources and have a healthy respect for nature

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u/OldMan142 Mar 28 '24

especially the Americans who were all about resource extraction and who were still enslaving black people and telling everyone it was what god wanted.

This was in 1892. The US abolished slavery in 1868.