June 23, 2012 – 5:15 a.m.
Sequoia & Kings Canyon Current Fires
We at last struck a trail that has recently been cut for the purpose of bringing in cattle. We came to camp here by a little meadow…It is at an altitude of 7,800 feet. Here is a succession of grassy meadows – one called Big Meadow is several miles in extent – and some men have cut a trail in and have driven up a few hundred cattle that were starving on the plains.
– William H. Brewer, 18 June 1864
As early as the 1860s, my mother’s great-grandfather John Cutler drove his cattle from Visalia through Whitaker Forest over Redwood Mountain on his way to Big Meadows for summer grazing. My grandfather John F. Cutler continued the practice as late as the 1950s. I’ve been told that in the early days the vaqueros would set fire to the brush after the last cattle were gathered before the winter snows.
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