A Historic Trek: The Amazing Honeymoon of W.F. Traughber and Nora Petree Traughber in 1905, Part VII

Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots - Blog Post #53
By Tonya McQuade

American explorer, military leader, and politician John Charles Frémont in front of the Fremont Tree, 1888.

Back in September of last year, I started a series of blog posts about the “historic honeymoon” my great grandparents, Frank and Nora Traughber, took back in 1905. My father had recently given me their old photo album, and I had decided to “dig in” to the story of their lives. After getting married in San Jose on August 17, 1905 (see this post about their wedding), they set off on a four-week honeymoon that took them throughout California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Utah before heading back to Missouri, where Frank (aka. Dr. William Francis Traughber) had his medical practice. Mike and I had been to many of those same places, so I wanted to see how their experiences might have compared to ours.

The first post in the honeymoon series talked about the time Frank and Nora spent in Del Monte (aka. Monterey), Pacific Grove, and Santa Cruz (see this link for more details and photos), but I barely touched on the Santa Cruz aspect of their trip. The photos in their scrapbook that were labeled “the big trees in Santa Cruz” were quite faded and discolored, and at the time they didn’t really capture my attention. These past few days, though, I started researching more about their time in Santa Cruz because I am working on expanding that blog series into a travelogue-style book that tells about their adventures. And guess what? Their story and photos got more interesting the more I learned.

Nora standing beside a giant Coastal Redwood  in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Frank playfully climbing up into a giant redwood – the two trunks have fused together through a process called inosculation. 

There are several photos of Frank and Nora in the album showing them among the big trees. So, the first question I had to ask was, where exactly did they go? Which big trees did they see? And how did they get there? Big Basin State Park had opened in 1902 as the first California State Park, so I knew that was a possibility, but it seemed like getting there from Monterey for an afternoon visit would have presented quite a challenge. Back in 1905, the main route to Big Basin was a rough, rutted wagon road that connected it to the nearby town of Boulder Creek, and with no railway option, visitors had to arrive by horse-drawn vehicles. The journey was a major undertaking, even for those living nearby.

The Santa Cruz & Felton Railroad crosses a trestle on the way to Big Tree Grove. Courtesy of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. [1]

I quickly figured out with a bit of online research that Frank and Nora would have had easy access to a very popular tourist attraction of their day: Welch Big Tree Grove in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Popularly called “Santa Cruz Big Trees,” thousands of visitors had toured the grove since it opened in 1867, with access made much easier by the opening of the first railway in 1875 (Big Basin never gained railway access). Visitors at Monterey’s Hotel Del Monte, where Frank and Nora were staying, could board the Southern Pacific Railroad at Del Monte station bound for Santa Cruz, then transfer to a local line, the Santa Cruz Big Trees & Pacific Railway, for the ride to Big Tree Station. Welch Big Tree Grove, later known as Santa Cruz County Big Trees Park after becoming a county park in 1930, operated until 1942, when it closed down due to World War II. It is now part of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. 

Entrance sign to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park near Felton. Photo by Tonya McQuade.

Those who know me know I am a big fan of both state and national parks. My car, as well as my computer, bear stickers for each. I’m also extremely grateful to people like John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Stephen Mather, Charles Young, Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, Marjorie Stoneman, Thomas Moran, and so many more for the work they did to help preserve the trees, wildlife, and beauty of our national parks for posterity. 

The cover of my laptop clearly “advertises” my love of state and national parks.

I have also always loved walking among the towering Coastal Redwoods in places like Redwood National Park and Big Basin State Park, as well as the Giant Sequoias found further inland in places like Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove and Calaveras Big Trees State Park, so I wanted to know more about how the privately-owned Welch Big Tree Grove became Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. I also could not remember if I had actually walked through the specific Redwood Grove that Frank and Nora would have seen.

So yesterday, I suggested to Mike that we drive to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which is just thirty miles from our house, and go for a hike through the Redwood Grove. What follows includes some information from the research I did these past couple days, as well as additional information from the Visitors Center, the park map and brochure, the Redwood Grove Loop Trail Guide, and the book I purchased at the gift store: Historic Tales of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park - Big Tree Grove, by Deborah Osterberg.

The book I bought at the gift shop yesterday — it’s full of interesting photos and information.

When Joseph Warren Welch, Sr. purchased this amazing grove in 1867, he fortunately saved it from the logging that would have likely been its fate. Many of the other big trees around it had already been cut down – either for their wood or to fuel the lime kilns that were big business in the Santa Cruz Mountains in those days (that was actually how the Cowell family earned much of their money). Only about 5 percent of all the old-growth redwoods that stood before 1949 are still standing.

Welch, instead, turned his grove into a tourist attraction, with a hotel, dining hall, cabins, and a dance pavilion. His wife Anna was a big motivation for this. In the photo below, Nora is standing in front of one of the Welch resort buildings, though I am not sure which one. The buildings, which stood near the Fremont Tree, have all since been removed.

Nora standing in front of one of the old resort buildings, which have now been removed.

The Fremont Tree was one of the park’s biggest attractions. According to reports, Second Lieutenant John Charles Frémont of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers had visited this grove in the San Lorenzo Valley in 1846 with his scout, the legendary mountain man Kit Carson, on his third scientific expedition to the West. “The accounts of the great trees in the forest on the west slope of the mountain,” according to his memoirs, “had roused [his] curiosity,” so he wanted to see them for himself [2]. Frontiersman and early Santa Cruz Mountain pioneer Isaac Graham, who knew Kit Carson from his fur-trapping days and lived in a small logging settlement in the area, served as Frémont’s host.

Frémont had earned the nickname “the Pathfinder” due to his celebrated explorations, and his exciting descriptions of those travels (aided by his wife Jessie’s pen) had caused his accounts to become national bestsellers. His descriptions of the giant Coastal Redwoods first sparked skepticism and disbelief, then fascination and excitement, among his fans, and many wanted to see the big trees for themselves. California at the time was still under Mexican control, but that didn’t stop adventurous settlers from moving in.

Here I am, sort of copying Frank’s pose from above; these two trunks have fused together through a process called inosculation. I tried to find the tree Frank was standing in above, but there were too many possibilities.

Graham had arrived in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1841, where he established a distillery at Rancho Zayante (near present-day Felton), one of the Mexican land grants in the area. He also built one of the first water-powered saw mills, along with Danish immigrant Peter Lassen. Graham built the road now known as Graham Hill Road, on which Mike and I drove yesterday when we visited Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, to transport his timber to the coast for shipment. Later, the railroad helped with that challenging task.

At Graham’s request, Frémont spent several days measuring the largest tree in the grove, and he found that it measured 275 feet in height and 15 feet in diameter, three feet above the base. [3] That tree later became known as “The Giant” and is still called that today. You can see a few views of it below in the photos I took yesterday.

This tree, known as "The Giant," is the one that Fremont measured. It stands 282 feet tall, over 17 feet wide, and weighs over 400 tons. It used to be even taller until part of the top of the tree broke off. Photo by Tonya McQuade.

Mike and I standing in front of “The Giant.”

This large burl hangs off the side of The Giant; burls are natural, knobby growths filled with dormant buds and can be a result of past damage, like a fire, from which the tree has recovered. Photo by Tonya McQuade. 

When Welch and his family later owned the grove, it became a common practice for visitors to tack their notes and calling cards on “The Giant,” as well as on other neighboring trees, as seen below. This practice was eventually called out by a well-known conservationist, as you’ll soon discover.

This is one of the photos I found in Deborah Osterberg’s book cited above. [4]

Another nearby tree called the “Fremont Tree” was reputed to be where Frémont slept during his 1846 visit, for it had been hollowed out by fire, providing a cavity measuring approximately twelve by fifteen feet with a ceiling about twenty-six feet high. [5] An 1862 article in the Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel claimed that thirty people could stand inside of it. [6] When Frémont visited the grove again in 1888, he posed in front of the tree with his wife and daughter. Asked by a reporter whether that account was true, he reportedly said, “It’s a good story; let it stand,” according to the park brochure

Gen. John C. Frémont, his wife Jessie Benton Frémont, and their daughter Elizabeth in front of the Fremont Tree during their 1888 visit. Courtesy of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park Brochure.

I like to picture Frank and Nora climbing inside to see this cavernous space for themselves, perhaps with a number of other visitors to see how many would fit. They must have gotten a good laugh from the experience. I have been inside other similar caverns in other giant trees, but due to a large puddle blocking the entrance yesterday, I was not able to go inside the Fremont Tree. I was able, though, to take a picture in front of it.

Here I am standing in front of the same tree on Oct. 28, 2025; as you can see, the opening is now much smaller than it was in 1888. The tree has significantly “healed” its hole by forming a new layer of bark over the wound and by growing specialized callus tissue around the edges to seal the area off. Photo by Mike McQuade.

The present-day Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park is located on several former Mexican land grants – Rancho Rincon, Rancho Zayante, and Rancho Carbonera – that changed hands many times over the years. Telling that history is beyond the scope of this blog post. Suffice it to say, most of that land was used by pioneers for logging, tanoak-bark harvesting, lime manufacturing, and even gold mining. Welch’s decision to turn his 1867 purchase into a tourist destination was definitely novel for the time.

As Osterberg writes in her book: “By keeping the grove open to visitors, Welch was the first to save a coast redwood forest from the logger’s axe purely for public enjoyment. Welch was part of a larger change in American society taking place in the nineteenth century. Gradually, people began to enjoy more leisure time and disposable income. Spending time among spectacular natural scenery furnished an opportunity for sorely needed relaxation. The new nature tourism provided both wealthy and middle-class Americans with an outlet from stressful changes brought on by increasing urbanization and industrialization. The setting aside of Big Tree Grove in 1867 came very early in our nation’s nascent efforts in nature preservation, only a few years after the preserving of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees (1864); before the establishment of our nation’s first national park, Yellowstone (1872); and thirty-five years before the establishment of the first redwood state park, Big Basin (1902).” [7]

This tree in the Redwood Grove is noted for its burl, and it’s easy to see why! Photo by Tonya McQuade.

It was a year after the creation of Big Basin that President Theodore Roosevelt, as part of his 14,000-mile rail tour of the American West, visited Welch’s grove on May 11, 1903. Earlier, on May 1, 1891, President Benjamin Harrison had also visited the grove during a tour through the western states after having signed the Yosemite Reserves Act of 1890 and the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 to protect forests. A section of the grove was named after him following the visit. Roosevelt also had a tree named after him. Apparently, this was a very common way to honor special guests, and many of the trees used to have large plaques on them bearing people’s names.

When Roosevelt saw the large plaque with his name placed on a tree, he asked that it be replaced with a much smaller one so as not to detract from the tree’s beauty. He also criticized the hanging of notes and cards on the trees, saying in his address to the people at the grove, “All of us ought to want to see nature preserved; and take a big tree whose architect has been the ages, anything that man does toward it may hurt it and cannot help it; and above all, the rash creature who wishes to leave his name to mar the beauties of nature should be sternly discouraged. Take those cards pinned up on that tree; they give an air of the ridiculous to this solemn and majestic grove. To pin those cards up there is as much out of place as if you tacked so many tin cans up there…. Keep these trees, keep all the wonderful scenery of this wonderful State unmarred by the vandalism or the folly of man.” [8]

President Theodore Roosevelt standing in front of “The Giant” on May 11, 1903. Courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California.

By contrast, in his address to the audience gathered in Santa Cruz earlier in the day, Roosevelt had commended his audience, saying: “I am about to visit the grove of the great trees. I wish to congratulate the people of California … on the work you have done to preserve these great trees. Cut down one of these giants and you cannot fill its place. The ages were their architects and we owe it to ourselves and to our children’s children to preserve them…. We should see to it that no man for speculative purposes or for mere temporary use exploits the groves of great trees. Where the individuals and associations of individuals cannot preserve them, the state and if necessary the nation should step in and see to their preservation.” [9]

I found the roots of this fallen tree especially interesting — and spooky! Photo by Tonya McQuade.

Just four days after his visit to Welch Big Tree Grove, Roosevelt joined conservationist John Muir for their famous three day camping trip that led to the creation of Yosemite National Park. The first night, they camped among the Giant Sequoias in the Mariposa Grove; the second night, near Sentinel Dome; and the final night, at the edge of Bridalveil Meadow in Yosemite Valley. 

Roosevelt’s visits throughout the West convinced him of the need to protect these national treasures. By the end of his presidency, he had set aside over 230 million acres of public land, creating 150 national forests, 55 federal bird reservation and game preserves, five national parks, and the first eighteen national monuments. He also created the U.S. Forest Service and – after some early experiments protecting pelicans and bison – what would eventually become the National Wildlife Refuge System. Truly, Theodore Roosevelt earned his title as the conservationist president. I know that I personally have benefited greatly from his foresight. [10]

Steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie also made a visit to Welch Big Tree Grove in 1910 after first stopping in Santa Cruz to see the new library Church Street that he had gifted to the city. While there, he also visited the now-competing “Cowell’s Big Trees” grove adjacent to Welch’s. He called both groves “God’s first temples” and said he “[did] not believe any temple ever reared by the hand of man can be considered in the same place with this before us.” [11]

Inadvertently, one proprietor on the property – likely Stanly Welch – helped to save even more trees when he chased photographer Andrew P. Hill off his property. Hill was trying to take photos for a story he was working on about the Santa Cruz Redwoods. Incensed by the confrontation and believing that everyone should be able to enjoy these towering giants, he returned to the Santa Cruz Mountains, but this time, he avoided Welch’s grove and “went deeper into the back country to the Big Basin area. There he photographed extensively and became so inspired by the ancient majesty of the trees that he and friends formed the Sempervirens Club. The members dedicated their organization to the preservation of redwood trees for all to enjoy. They attracted wealthy and influential people who raised funds and convinced legislators to purchase Big Basin and establish California's first State Park.” [12]

This train track, which now leads to Roaring Camp, is the same track that Frank and Nora would have arrived on back in 1905.

I have been to Big Basin on numerous occasions, including for camping trips; but, as I mentioned earlier in this post, I couldn’t remember if I had ever visited Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. When I saw, though, that it is right next to Roaring Camp, I knew that I must have walked the Redwood Loop before. About fifteen years ago, I rode the Santa Cruz Beach Train from the Boardwalk to Roaring Camp with my family and my brother’s family. We explored Roaring Camp, road the Redwood Forest Steam Train through the forest, and hiked through the redwoods. I had done the same about twenty years ago as a chaperone for one of my children’s field trips. I had just thought of both trips as a visit to Roaring Camp since I had not arrived through the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park entrance either time or had time to go to the Visitors Center.

Of course, walking the Redwood Trail Loop with my husband as a leisurely pace was quite different from managing the trail with a bunch of running and squealing young kids. Still, I had seen some of these giant redwoods before — and I’d ridden on the same tracks Frank and Nora had more than a century earlier.

Postcard Photo of the Southern Pacific Big Tree Station, which was about eight miles from Santa Cruz, on the Coast Line of Southern Pacific Railroad, Santa Cruz, California. [13]

I wish the earlier photos of Frank and Nora among the Big Trees were of a higher quality, but you can still make them both out – each dressed formally for a hike in the mountains, as was the case with other guests at the time. No hiking boots, jeans, shorts, leggings, tank tops, or sweatshirts for them! I’m guessing they must have stuck to simple paths, taking a leisurely stroll as they looked up at these giant behemoths. John Muir, I’m guessing, would have approved, as I always think of what he had to say about hiking in the mountains:

“I don't like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not 'hike!' Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going they would reply, 'A la sainte terre', 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them.”

The Redwood Grove yesterday did feel like a sacred place. I’m glad I was able to “share this moment” with my great-grandparents.

Hiding out in a “sacred” space inside this giant redwood. Photo by Mike McQuade.

Endnotes:

1. Osterberg, Deborah. Historic Tales of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park: Big Trees Grove. History Press, 2020. Pg. 48.

2. Fremont, John Charles. Memoirs of My Life by John Charles Fremont. Vol. 1. CHicago: Belford, Clarke & Company, 1887. Hathi Trust Digital Library, babel.hathitrust.org. Pg. 457.

3. Osterberg, pg. 26.

4. Ibid, pg. 53.

5. Ibid, pg. 55.

6. Ibid, pg. 56.

7. Ibid, pg. 37.

8. Roosevelt, Theodore. “Remarks at the Big Tree Grove in Santa Cruz, May 11, 1903.” The American Presidency Project, California Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/297979.

9. Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919. Address of President Roosevelt at Santa Cruz, California, May 11, 1903. Multi-image. Theodore Roosevelt Papers. Library of Congress Manuscript Division. Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library. Dickinson State University. https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o289816.

10. “Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) The Conservation President, U.S. Fish.” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, https://www.fws.gov/staff-profile/theodore-roosevelt-1858-1919-conservation-president. 

11. Osterberg, pg. 136.

12. Dye, Joe, and Joseph Majors. “Cultural History.” California State Parks, https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=912. 

13. “Big Trees Station Southern Pacific.” Wikipedia Commons, Cardinell-Vincent Co. San Francisco & Los Angeles, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Big_Tree_station_Southern_Pacific.jpg.