Two giant sequoias in Mountain Home Grove take their names from the first pages of Genesis, and they had very different fires. Genesis, once ranked seventh among the largest trees known, lost its top in the 2020 Castle Fire and was badly burned at the base. The Adam Tree, named around 1884 and measured at 29 metres round in 1978, came through with a blackened base and little else. The grove sits in a state demonstration forest above Springville, free to enter and a long mountain drive from anywhere.
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Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) · Mountain Home Grove
The Adam Tree was the largest sequoia in Mountain Home Grove for exactly as long as nobody had measured Genesis. Jesse Hoskins named it around 1884, and in 1978 the tree surveyors Flint and Law put numbers on it: 29 metres round and 991.6 cubic metres of wood. Seven years later the same pair measured Genesis, elsewhere in the grove, and Adam slipped to second place at home. Ranked against every giant sequoia known, it now sits 20th or 21st; the lists disagree by one place.
The Castle Fire burned through Mountain Home in 2020 and took the top off Genesis. Adam came off far better. A visitor who walked the grove in June 2021 wrote that it looked virtually untouched; another account describes a blackened, undermined base on a tree that was otherwise fine. Both are hobbyist trip reports, and we have found nothing written about it since 2023, so its present state rests on their word.
The grove is free to enter. Getting here is a drive on mountain roads from Springville, with no bus, and we could not confirm the trail to the tree or whether the road is open in a given month, so check with CAL FIRE or Tulare County before you set out.
Nobody has published an age for the Adam Tree. If you know how old it is, or you have stood under it since the fire, tell us.
Photo: Mikesclark (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) · Mountain Home Grove
Before the 2020 Castle Fire, Genesis ranked seventh among the largest trees known on Earth. Then the fire came through Mountain Home Grove, and the figures on this page became history.
The name came late. The tree surveyors Flint and Law named and measured it in 1985, a century after the neighbouring Adam Tree had been named, and promptly demoted Adam to second-largest in the grove. The last full measurement, from 2013, gave Genesis a height of 86.2 metres and a girth of 24.04 metres at chest height. Read both numbers as a record of the tree before the fire. It is shorter now, by an amount nobody has published.
Two visitors who walked the grove in 2021 described the damage the same way: the top gone, many branches lost, the base badly burned. Neither said it was dead. That is also the most recent word we have; nothing written since 2023 says whether Genesis is holding on or declining. If you have seen it lately, we would like to know.
The grove is part of a state demonstration forest run by CAL FIRE and is free to enter. It is a drive on mountain roads from Springville with no public transport, and we could not confirm the trail or the road's season, so check with CAL FIRE before you go. No age has been published for it either.
Photo: Mikesclark (CC BY-SA 3.0)