Discovery Tree and General Noble Tree

Top of this image (lithograph) shows a party of 32 people dancing on the stump of the Discovery Tree, North Calaveras Grove, USA. Image at the Bottom: a 30-foot section of the General Noble Tree, which was displayed at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and later at the Mall in Washington, DC. It was subsequently taken to the US government's Arlington Experiment Farm, where it was misplaced. (The image is scanned from the book, ‘Redwoods: The World's Largest Trees’ written by Hewes, J.J., 1984, published by Gallery Books.)

The giant sequoia tree was well known to the Native American tribes of the area of the Giant Forests, home to these giant redwood trees. But the account of the trees can be found in the diary of the explorer J. K. Leonard (1833), and though it does not mention any locality, it is believed his route would have taken him through the Calaveras Grove, followed by John M. Wooster, who carved his initials on the bark of the Hercules Tree in the Calaveras Grove in 1850. But publicity about the tree was given when the Discovery Tree was found by Augustus T. Dowd in the Calaveras Grove in 1852, and the 'Discovery Tree', was felled in 1853.