Nelder Grove

Nelder Grove
The Bull Buck Tree of Nelder Grove
Location within California
Geography
Location	Madera County, California, United States
Coordinates	37°26′24″N 119°35′16″W
Elevation	5,200–5,600 ft (1,600–1,700 m)
Area	1,540-acre (6.2 km2)
Ecology
Dominant tree species	Sequoiadendron giganteum

Nelder Grove is a giant sequoia grove in the western Sierra Nevada, within the Sierra National Forest in Madera County, California. The grove covers about 1,540 acres (6.2 km²) south of Yosemite National Park and contains about 68 mature giant sequoias among a forest of pine, fir, and incense cedar. A 2012 U.S. Forest Service description listed 106 mature giant sequoias in the grove. The Railroad Fire burned through Nelder Grove in 2017, killing 38 large sequoias.

The Southern Sierra Miwok lived in and traveled through the area for several thousand years. The first known Euro-American account dates to 1851, when Robert Eccleston, a member of the Mariposa Battalion, recorded the grove during the Mariposa War. In 1870, the Forest King was felled and sectioned for exhibition.

Commercial logging began in 1878, when the Madera Flume and Trading Company began cutting timber in and around Nelder Grove, including many giant sequoias. The surviving sequoias came under federal protection when the grove was transferred to the U.S. Forest Service in 1928.

Ecology

Main article: Ecology of the Sierra Nevada

Nelder Grove lies within the Sierra Nevada lower montane forest and consists of giant sequoias scattered through a mixed-conifer forest that includes ponderosa pine, white fir, and incense cedar.

The grove's giant sequoias are genetically isolated from nearby populations. A study of giant sequoia genetics found limited gene flow between Nelder Grove and Mariposa Grove, despite the groves being only about 7 km (4.3 mi) apart. Within Nelder Grove, the sequoias occur in relatively small, spatially separated genetic neighborhoods; the researchers identified this structure as making the population particularly vulnerable to loss of genetic diversity.

Nelder Grove also supports several uncommon plant species. Forest Service surveys have documented mountain lady's-slipper orchid at about 15 locations in the grove and veined water lichen along Nelder Creek.

History

Native people

Archaeological studies indicate that the Southern Sierra Miwok camped in Nelder Grove for several thousand years, gathering acorns and hunting. Bedrock mortars in the grove, used to process acorns, are among the surviving traces of Indigenous life there.

Nelder Grove lay within a broader region where Indigenous territories and patterns of travel overlapped. At the time of Euro-American contact, Southern Sierra Miwok communities lived to the north and west, Chukchansi Yokuts communities to the south and west, and Western Mono communities in the mountains around present-day Bass Lake. Forest Service studies describe considerable interaction and territorial overlap among the three groups.

Early accounts and naming

The largest tree in Fresno Grove, photographed by John P. Soule in 1870.

The first known Euro-American account of Nelder Grove dates to the Mariposa War. In 1851, Robert Eccleston, a member of the Mariposa Battalion, recorded an expedition into the upper Fresno River country where giant sequoias were encountered. His diary was not published until 1957, and the grove subsequently became associated with Galen Clark, who explored and publicized it in the late 1850s. Clark called it Fresno Grove because it was then within Fresno County.

John A. Nelder, a former gold prospector who had come to California in 1849, settled in the grove by 1875 and built a log cabin on homesteaded land. That year John Muir, while studying the giant sequoia groves south of Yosemite, encountered Nelder at his cabin and spent time exploring the grove with him. Muir portrayed Nelder as the "Hermit of the Fresno Forest" and described him as "a fine kind man, who in going into the woods has at last gone home."

Muir first wrote about Fresno Grove and Nelder in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin in September 1875. He returned to the account in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1878 and later incorporated it into Our National Parks (1901).

Nelder died in 1889 in a fire that destroyed his cabin. His son Claudius inherited the property and sold it to the Madera Flume and Trading Company in 1892.

Timber era

See also: Madera Sugar Pine Company

The Madera Flume and Trading Company logged extensively in and around Nelder Grove beginning in 1878. Its principal targets were sugar pine, ponderosa pine, white fir, and incense cedar, although giant sequoias were also felled. From 1888 to 1892, the company's California Mill No. 4 operated within the grove near the present campground. A 1992 inventory recorded 101 living old-growth giant sequoias in Nelder Grove and 277 old-growth stumps and snags.

Logs were moved toward the mill by horse and oxen teams and later with equipment including a steam donkey. Cross-log and two-pole chutes were also used on the steep terrain. Because there was not enough water at Nelder Grove to carry lumber directly by flume, sawn lumber from Mill No. 4 was loaded onto cars and sent about three-quarters of a mile by a gravity tramway to the company's flume system. From there, bundles of lumber traveled about 52 miles (84 km) to Madera, where they could be finished and shipped by rail.

Mill No. 4 closed in 1892, but the cutting of giant sequoias did not end with the mill. Some of the larger trees felled afterward were used for fence posts, grape stakes, and building shakes, uses that took advantage of the wood's resistance to decay.

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  The lumber mill at Nelder Grove around 1881.
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  Loggers and their families.
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  A group portrait portrays the trees' remarkable scale.
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  A state-of-the-art Dolbeer single spool donkey sometime after 1881.
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  The Nelder Grove Tramway.

Named trees

Several of Nelder Grove's giant sequoias have been given individual names because of their size or history.

The Nelder Tree is the largest known living giant sequoia in the grove, with an estimated trunk volume of 34,993 cubic feet (990.9 m³) and a height of about 266 feet (81 m). It is named for John A. Nelder, who lived in the grove during the 1870s.

The Bull Buck Tree is among the grove's best-known surviving sequoias. The U.S. Forest Service has measured it at 246 feet (75 m) tall with a ground-level circumference of 99 feet (30 m). Its name comes from the logging term bull buck, meaning the foreman or "boss of the woods".

Other named sequoias include Big Ed, named for Soquel Mill foreman Ed Zerlang, and the Old Forester, named for former Sierra National Forest supervisor Walter Puhn. The Forest King, felled in 1870 for commercial exhibition, was another of the grove's notable trees; its stump was identified in 2003.

Access

Nelder Grove is reached from State Route 41 by way of Sky Ranch Road (Road 632) and Forest Road 5S19. The final approach to the grove is on an unpaved forest road and may be inaccessible during periods of heavy snow.

The grove was temporarily closed in 2025 while the Forest Service carried out post-fire restoration and hazardous-fuels reduction work. Nelder Grove reopened to the public on January 1, 2026.

Recreation

The Shadow of the Giants National Recreation Trail was constructed in 1965 and designated a National Recreation Trail in 1978. The roughly 1-mile (1.6 km) interpretive loop followed Nelder Creek through the southwestern part of the grove. The Railroad Fire severely damaged the trail in 2017, destroying bridges, interpretive signs, and other infrastructure, and the trail was subsequently closed.

Other trails lead from the campground area to named sequoias including the Bull Buck Tree and Big Ed, as well as the Graveyard of the Giants. The Forest Service also maintains a small campground within the grove.

Historic Structures

Bildeo Meadow Cabin

An interpretive area near the Nelder Grove campground contains two restored log cabins that were relocated from nearby Bildeo Meadow in 1980–81, along with full-size replicas of cross-log and two-pole logging chutes. The cabins had been used during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and were moved to protect them from deterioration under the heavy winter snow at Bildeo Meadow. A windstorm damaged the roof of one cabin shortly after the move, and it was rebuilt the following year.

One of the relocated structures was a square-hewn log cabin dating to about 1880. During its reconstruction, deteriorated red-fir wall logs were replaced with hewn sugar pine and white fir, and the restored cabin was subsequently used as a seasonal interpretive center.

Railroad Fire

The Railroad Fire began on August 29, 2017, and ultimately burned 12,407 acres (5,021 ha) of the Sierra National Forest. The fire burned through about 83 percent of Nelder Grove, with approximately 21 percent of the grove experiencing high-severity fire. The fire also severely damaged the Shadow of the Giants National Recreation Trail, destroying bridges, interpretive signs, and other infrastructure.

A post-fire inventory found that 38 giant sequoias more than 1.2 m (3.9 ft) in diameter died within three years of the fire. Thirty-four of those deaths occurred in areas that burned at high severity. Research on recent giant sequoia fires has linked increasing mortality of large trees to the growing extent of high-severity wildfire, associated with a warming climate and the accumulation of forest fuels following more than a century of fire exclusion.

Concerns about wildfire and accumulated fuels in Nelder Grove long predated the Railroad Fire. In 1961, Madera County officials considered acquiring the grove in part to permit more extensive timber removal and prescribed burning than was then allowed under federal management. The Forest Service later introduced prescribed fire in the grove, including an experimental burn in 1975. Concerns nevertheless persisted. In 2000, retired Forest Service employee Paul Rich warned that without additional fuel reduction, the grove remained vulnerable to a severe wildfire.

The fire also created conditions for extensive natural regeneration. A study conducted six years after the Railroad Fire found that giant sequoia seedling density and growth increased with fire severity, and that sequoias made up a greater proportion of regenerating conifers in the most severely burned areas. Because the study plots had not been replanted after the fire, the regeneration was entirely natural.

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  Fire burning in Nelder Grove on September 10, 2017.
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  Resource Advisors (READ) from the National Park Service apply fire-resistant wrap to a historic Bildeo cabin.
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  Firefighters pose atop a giant sequoia stump.
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  Portions of Nelder Grove became a snag forest after exposure to high intensity wildfire.

Protection and Restoration Efforts

Following the Railroad Fire, researchers reported a strong correlation between fire severity and the density, growth, and dominance of new giant sequoia seedlings. The study found that high-severity fire can promote substantial natural regeneration in giant sequoia groves.

In July 2022, the U.S. Forest Service approved an expedited plan to reduce hazardous fuels in Nelder Grove. Officials cited earlier fuels treatments in nearby Mariposa Grove prior to the Washburn Fire as evidence of their effectiveness. The project established 100-foot protective buffers around 42 mature giant sequoias.

Nelder Grove reopened January 1, 2026, after fuels reduction treatments across nearly 700 acres completed at a cost of $11.5 million.

See also

• List of giant sequoia groves
• Mariposa Grove - the nearest neighboring giant sequoia grove.
• Converse Basin Grove - a giant sequoia grove that was logged extensively in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

External links

• Media related to Nelder Grove at Wikimedia Commons
• Friends of Nelder Grove