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In This Section... Before the World Rushed In Juan Bautista de Anza Jedidiah Smith John Sutter buys Fort Ross John Bidwell John C. Fremont Kit Carson, Fremont's Guide Donner Party Ranch and Mission Days Ranch and Mission Days, part 2 Joaquin Miller Mexican Period 1821-1846 Rancho Era Experience 1820-1848 Mission Era 1769-1820

John Bidwell meets Fremont

Fremont's first visit to California was in the month of March, 1844. He came via eastern Oregon, traveling south, and passing east of the Sierra Nevada, and crossed the chain about opposite the bay of San Francisco, at the head of the American River, and descended into the Sacramento Valley to Sutter's Fort. It was there I first met him. He staid but a short time, three or four weeks perhaps, to refit with fresh mules and horses and such provisions as he could obtain, and then set out on his return to the United States. Coloma, where Marshall afterward discovered gold, was on one of the branches of the American River. Fremont probably came down that very stream. How strange that he and his scientific corps did not discover signs of gold, as Commodore Wilkes's party had done when coming overland from Oregon in 1841! One morning at the breakfast table at Sutter's, Fremont was urged to remain a while and go to the coast, and among other things which it would be of interest for him to see was mentioned a very large redwood tree (Sequoia sempervirens) near Santa Cruz, or rather a cluster of trees, forming apparently a single trunk, which was said to be seventy-two feet in circumference. I then told Fremont of the big tree I had seen in the Sierra Nevada in October, 1841, which I afterwards verified to be one of the fallen big trees of the Calaveras Grove. I therefore believe myself to have been the first white man to see the mammoth trees of California. The Sequoia are found no where except in California. The redwood that I speak of is the Sequoia sempervirens, and is confined to the sea-coast and the west side of the Coast Range Mountains. the Sequoia gigantea, or mammoth tree, is found only on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada - nowhere farther north than latitude 38" 30'.