Nelder Grove grove consists of approximately 1,540 acres in the Sierra National Forest. The U.S. Forest Service acquired the land from the Madera Flume and Trading Company in 1928. Currently there are about 100 mature sequoias mixed in a forest of pine, fir and cedar. Only 277 giant sequoia trees were harvested here. The California Lumber Company started working in the area about 130 years ago. Lumber was cut, processed at the mill, piled for drying, and then later put into a flume (a wooden water channel) in the lower meadow on California creek. Bundles of lumber would float down the flume to Madera, a distance of 52 miles.
Most of the lumber harvested was not from the sequoia tree, but primarily sugar pine, ponderosa pine, white fir, and cedar. The sequoia tree does not make good building material. When the sequoia tree falls it is very brittle and often breaks up into many pieces. Only a small section near the base of the tree does not “splinter” when it crashes to the ground. Estimates of the amount of wasted wood from logging operations of
sequoias, primarily due to splintering, were as high as 75%.
Nelder Grove was first named Fresno Grove of Big Trees because it was in Fresno County. The Grove was first surveyed in 1874 by the General Land Office. John Nelder came to the grove in 1875 after having left New Orleans in 1849 to work in the gold fields; he built a cabin and stayed until his death 14 years later. It was not until 1937 that the name Nelder Grove appeared on Sierra National Forest maps. (from: Brenda Negley/Friends of Nelder Grove: An Interpretive Guide to the Nelder Grove Area, August 2011)