Redwoods

I think after seeing some of the stumps and what's left, probably the biggest trees are gone, and maybe have been for 50 or more years.
And that's a shame. This tree is 297 feet tall and 19 feet in diameter. They figure roughly one foot of diameter per century, making this one something like 1900 years old.

You get some of the sense of the size of these things when you can compare them to something else, Vickie is standing at the bottom of this tree (the picture below).

People have been idiots and or greedy idiots. We saw one motel that was advertizing that the entire motel had been built from the wood from one single tree. Some would call that a powerful arguement for cutting down a 2000 year old tree I guess. But someday there won't be any 2000 year old trees to see.

In a book Vickie's got they talk about a man that came from back East in the 1800's, found the biggest tree he could find, cut it down and took a piece back East to show people "The Biggest Tree in the World" Some idiot newpaper men did the same kind of thing in the caves, broke some formations over one hundred years ago to see if there was anything behind them. They look like they were broken yesterday.