My wife and I enjoyed the weekend starting out at Three Rivers. We meet some great people in Three Rivers that are knowledgeable with the Fall of Giant Forest Village and its particulars. One individual told us that "William Tweed" Sequoia park historian was the main person driving the removal of buildings and bringing Giant Forest area to its present condition. If his statement is true, then in my mind he is a post "Col John White". To be more specific, in my research of the the destruction of Giant Forest, it seemed to me that the person that started the process was Col John White back in the 1930's. His attempts stopped in 1947 when he as forced to retire. In the early 1950's, Howard Hays (head of concessions at Giant Forest) and others obtained another 20 year contract on concessions (keeping life in the Village). Before the 20 years was up, newer management was starting to bring the Col White preservation philosophy of destruction on again. I think they started closing camp grounds down in 1969 and shut all down by 1971. I remember people telling me that they (NPS) were going to close them for 10 years and then reopen them. That sure didn't happen.
Tweed later entered into the process of sequoia management. I can't vertify about Tweed being involved but highly suspect its true. If Tweed is the later post Col White then he has done bad things for taxpayers and humans by restricting Giant Forest and destroying the Village. I read in the Bible that mankind has dominion over everything on the earth and is important to God. Why in the world would people take away privlages of usage out of a park that the "people own". The balance of preservation and usage are both important but taking people out of the equation is wrong (in my opinion). At Giant Forest Museum area I didn't see any changes, except I did see one thing that disturbed me. In the opening to Round Meadow that use to be a road are a few parking spots that all are labeled Handicap only. Most of the handicaped spots were covered with piles of dirt or rocks. One had a small tractor in one of the parking spots. There was another one nearby that had more covering of something that blocked the parking. I didn't see any construction work nearby and thought why would they want to block parking to the Round Meadow area.There are lots of other areas to store materials. The answer hit me as one of their "Meaness to people act" Other people told my wife and I, that the new NPS management system doesn't like people and would like us to go away. I can't be sure about that but acts like what I described would reinforce their statement.
We had a misfortunate problem when we were
driving Friday night. Our car broke down and had to be towed. One park ranger (Ranger Cleary) gave us
exceptional help and called for a tow truck. Ranger Cleary didn't know about the history of Giant Forest
Village and was new to the park. I hope he continues to be helpful and make the park better. Someone like him
could someday be the new Superientident and bring back personal usage (camping, lodging and etc).
I talked with the Lady Ranger at Giant Forest museum and she remembered me from my past visit. When I
inquired about if she checked out our web site www.giantforestvillage.com, she said shedid. I asked for her
opinion. She said she couldn't talk about it. I respected her for her answer since it was probably offensive to
her position. She was polite to me and I have no bad things to say for her, only hope she opens herself up to thinking for herself and consider what is going on. I hope you got something out of this report since its for all of us. The people in Three Rivers are fine people and have a wealth of knowledge of the Sequoia Park and its life. Best to all of you.
-D.D.