----------------------------------------------- | HEIGHT | DIAMETER NAME | FEET | FEET ----------------------------------------------- GIANT FOREST GROVE | General Sherman | 279.9 | 36.5 Abraham Lincoln | 270 | 31 William McKinley | 291 | 28 | | MUIR GROVE | | Dalton | 292 | 27 | | GARFIELD GROVE | California | 260 | 30 | | GENERAL GRANT GROVE | General Grant | 264 | 35 George Washington | 255 | 29 ----------------------------------------------- The Theodore Roosevelt Tree, which has not been measured at this writing, is one of the noblest of all, perfect in form and color, abounding in the glory of young maturity. To help realization at home of the majesty of the General Sherman Tree, mark its base diameter, thirty-six and a half feet, plainly against the side of some building, preferably a church with a steeple and neighboring trees; then measure two hundred and eighty feet, its height, upon the ground at right angles to the church; then stand on that spot and, facing the church, imagine the trunk rising, tapering slightly, against the building's side and the sky above it; then slowly lift your eyes until you are looking up into the sky at an angle of forty-five degrees, this to fix its height were it growing in front of the church. Imagine its lowest branches, each far thicker than the trunks of eastern elms and oaks, pushing horizontally out at a height above ground of a hundred and fifty feet, which is higher than the tops of most of the full-grown trees of our eastern forests. Imagine these limbs bent horizontally at right angles, like huge elbows, as though holding its green mantle close about its form. Imagine the upper branches nearly bare, shattered perhaps by lightning. And imagine its crown of foliage, dark yellowish-green, hanging in enormous graceful plumes. This is the King of Trees. IV THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, NORTH CENTRAL COLORADO. AREA, 398 SQUARE MILES I The Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the Cascade Range of California, Oregon, and Washington have each three national parks which fully represent their kind and quality. The great central system of the United States, the Rocky Mountains, which also possess three national parks, are represented in kind by only one, for Yellowstone is an exceptional volcanic interlude, and Glacier is the chance upheaval of shales and limestones from a period antedating the granite Rockies by many millions of years; neither in any sense exhibits the nature and scenic quality of the backbone of our continent.