Grizzly Giant
A giant tree.
Bradley Weber — CC BY 2.0 · dconvertini — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Dietmar Rabich — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dietmar Rabich — CC BY-SA 4.0 · dconvertini — CC BY-SA 2.0
Mariposa Grove is the largest grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park, California, near Wawona in the far south of the park, about 26 km south of Yosemite Valley in a straight line. It holds several hundred mature trees, two of them among the 30 largest giant sequoias in the world. Galen Clark and Milton Mann reached the grove in 1857, and Clark counted 427 mature giant sequoias and named it after Mariposa County. In 1864 President Abraham Lincoln signed an act granting the grove and Yosemite Valley to the state of California for protection. The grove closed from 2015 to 2018 for a major restoration that removed paved roads harming the tree roots, and it now draws about a million visitors a year. Huge red trunks rise among the pines, so tall that their crowns look small against the sky. The best known are the huge Grizzly Giant and the California Tunnel Tree, cut in 1895, which walkers pass through. Many trunks carry the scars of old fires, as sequoias depend on fire to regenerate. Visitors arrive at the welcome plaza and take a shuttle bus or walk up to the grove. Trails of different lengths start there, from an easy short loop among the big trees to a longer climb to Wawona Point. In winter the shuttle may stop and snow can cover the trails.
A giant tree.
Walk through it.
A viewpoint above.
Near Wawona, southern Yosemite National Park, California, United States
By shuttle from the welcome plaza.
Two to four hours.