Hike Info:
Type: Hiking
Trail head: Princess Campground
Trail: Indian basin Grove Interpretive Trail
Destination: Loop
Distance: 1.1 miles 1
Elevation Rise: 145'
Descent: 144‘
Maximum Elevation: 5,938'
1Distance and elevation
information is from a previous walk done on August
22, 2022.
Description:
Sherri and I are going on our
first meetup
hike in a while Not because we have not tried-just not often. Many
times the event got canceled. So we are excited to go and to go on a
John and Cathy hike. It has been a long time.
This hike is an interpretive
trail out of Princess
Campground
close to
Hume Lake.
The trail goes through a portion of the Indian
Basin Grove
which was extensively logged over a hundred years ago. We have done
it several times. It is a trail which talks about the logging, the
people and the environment of the area. Also the paved part of the
trail is made for accessibility.
There are only four parking
places, but the camp hosts allows for cars to be parked in a spot
which will not be used until the afternoon. Once all are gathered
together, about 10, we start off. John had asked if Sherri and I
would head up the front of the pack. There were twelve people who
walked this.
I set a pace along the lines
of a stroll. When we got to areas of interest, then I babbled about
its background. You can see some of the stuff which I knew about
below.
When we go a little ways, the trail splits into two loops. Sherri
takes a group along the shorter, paved loop. I take the remaining
group around the longer, dirt trail.
Those poor people get punished
with my humor. Such as I told them that a group of us once saw a
moose out here. Of course there is a bit of disbelief as there are
no natural moose in California. They did understand that the reason
the moose is not around now is that it melted.
About the time we got back to
the cars, the shorter loop people also got back there. We jumble back
into the cars, and take off. We stopped at Big
Stump to
order our pizzas from Bear
Mountain Pizza.
It is a 35 minute drive down to the restaurant. We all enjoy a time
of comradery there before departing for our homes.
Us? We stopped at a furniture
store, Designs
in Oak,
and ordered some furniture. We then make it home about 2:30. Glad we
went up there today, even if we will be back up in the same area a
couple of days from now.
Background
Princess Campground.
This spectacular
site has three campground loops - Shining Cloud, Yellow Moon, and
Morning Star. It has the greatest number of huge, old Sequoia tree
stumps and young Sequoia trees along with a pleasant variety of
conifers. Shade is good throughout the campground; privacy between
camp sites is fair to good. Princess Campground is in the middle of
Indian Basin Grove next to Indian Basin Meadow and Creek.
From the Sequoia National Forest web
site
Indian Basin Grove
Indian Basin Grove
is a mid size grove of 448 acres with the popular Princess Campground
and Indian Basin interpretive trail within its boundaries. Before the
Forest Service acquired the grove in the 1930s the area was privately
owned. Between 1901 and 1907 the Sanger Lumber Company removed all
the mature trees including the ancient giant sequoias. Lumbermen
hauled the trees by cable railways over Converse Mountain and down
the backside of the mountain to the historic Converse Mill. Massive,
giant sequoia stumps remain as silent reminders of the great trees
that once grew here. Young giant sequoias have replaced many of the
giants that fell to the saw demonstrating the species resilience. In
tree ring studies, the stumps continue to help scientists piece
together prehistoric and historic weather patterns, fires and
droughts. The grove is easy to reach by car on State Highway 180. It
is best to visit in the summer because the road can be snowy and icy
in the winter. The grove is about 215 acres with sequoias mainly on
the south side of Indian Basin Creek.
From the Sequoia National Forest web
site
This seems to be one of the
lesser known/referenced groves of Sequoias.
Indians gathered at Indian
Basin to sell their wares to lumbermen when the area was heavily
logged in the 1890's. (Fry and White, 113)
Peter Browning, Places
Named of the Sierra Nevada
Converse.
Once contained a very extensive grove of the finest big trees; now
completely destroyed by lumbering.
CHARLES P. CONVERSE
Converse , who erected the courthouse , was also the first man to
occupy one of its dungeon cells as a prisoner for the homicide of
William H. Crowe on election day in September , 1876. The grand jury
liberated him on the theory that he had acted in self defense . The
homicide historically illustrates the passions that political
campaigns aroused in those days . With the exception of William
Aldrich , the pick and shovel miner , as the sole Republican for
years before and after the war , every other man in the county was
either an Andrew Jackson or a Jeff Davis Democrat , excepting a few
old - line Whigs , who though their party expired with Daniel Webster
, still held to their beliefs and scouted the new Republican
doctrines . Thus any political quarrel in the county could only arise
in the house of Democracy itself . It arose during the shrievalty
campaign of J. S. Ashman and James N. Walker , honest , capable and
uncompromising Democrats , and both incum- bents of the office for
two terms each .
Converse announcing himself
for rotation in office , espoused the cause . of Walker with all
energy and activity in a " hot and exciting canvass " not
so much between the principals as between " rash and reckless
adherents . " Election day passed off quietly with the exception
of the presence of armed men in public . The vote was light , and all
qualified electors had voted by three o'clock in the afternoon when
by common consent the count was started in the courtroom . Converse
was in front of Payne's saloon , when a cobble hurled from within by
a half drunken fellow passed close to his head . He fired at his
assailant , missed aim and ball lodged high in the wall . Crowe , a
confederate of the cobble thrower , sneaked up behind Converse and
struck . him on the back of the head with slungshot , only the
thickness of a felt hat protected the skull from fracture . Stunned
by the blow , Converse fell to his knees but arising fired and shot
Crowe through the body . Crowe fell on hands and knees ten feet away
, and tried to arise , and mutual friends rushed in to aid . In the
general melee , John Dwyer , teamster with the original fort garrison
and for years later in Fresno the driver of the " sand wagon , "
took to his heels to avoid the bullets and in the flight his hat was
blown off by a leaden messenger . Con- verse struggled against a
throng whom he fought as supposed assailants , but was landed finally
on the courthouse steps and by multitude of hands his Samson like
strength was overcome . After this tragedy , be became " more
uneasy , irresolute and unsettled . " He withdrew into the
mountains , south of the Kings River . There he laid claim upon
location to " a large amphitheater of forest and chaparral en-
circled by mountain ridges . " It bears to this day the name of
" Converse Basin , " though he never secured title . It has
been ruthlessly denuded of its timber , including Big Trees , in the
Millwood lumber mill operations . Upon return to the plains , he
professed reformation , was admitted as a member of an orthodox
church and publicly baptized in a font excavated for the cere- mony .
For a time he discharged faithfully the newly assumed responsi-
bilities , regained the confidence of former friends and secured that
of new ones . He was in the real estate business , but the old unrest
seized him and he drifted to San Francisco , where for ten years or
more " his checkered life was spent in desultory endeavors to
keep starvation at bay . " He an- nounced himself as a mining
expert and engineer . Converse was a striking figure , six feet tall
, weighed 200 pounds or more , and in later years was largely
developed abdominally . He was a man of great physical strength , and
an expert swimmer , a demonstrated accomplishment that is cited to
refute the assertion by some that his drowning in San Francisco Bay
was accidental . The fact is that he met death in a second attempt at
suicide , and when the waters of the bay gave up the corpse it was
weighted with rocks , a circumstance that alone effectually disposes
of the accidental death claim . He was a sociable companion , but a
change came over him after Gaster's disappearance . A shadow seemed
to hover over him , say those who had known him in the days of
abandon , when he was not always overneat or precise in attire , and
yet was remembered for kindly and animated face , topped by a shock
of stand - up - straight - in - the - air hair . For one of his
physical proportions , Converse was of intense mental and business
activity . He was a man of means in his day . Among his activ- ities
were the lumbermill at Crane Valley , which after the 1862 flood
passed into the hands of George McCullough . The ferry below
Millerton , likewise the property on the village side of the river ,
also went to others . He was known as far back as 1851 , when he and
T. C. Stallo were general mer- chants at Coarse Gold . So well
established was his reputation for restless- ness and financial
improvidence , that despite strong partisanship and posi- tion he was
never seriously considered politically . In connection with his Kings
River sojourn , he tried to exploit a plan to cut the virgin timber
in the basin , float the logs down the stream to railroad connection
, and from there out as lumber from the saw mill . Converse was a
glib and plausible talker and almost interested capital in the
enterprise . Logs had been floated to prove the feasibility of the
water transportation . A financial panic came on and capital dropped
him . With the building of the railroad , Converse is found on its
payroll as a legislative lobbyist and an active partisan of its
proposition of a $ 5,000 a mile subsidy for constructing the road
through the valley counties . Senator Thomas Fowler made one of his
record fights against the measure and the legislature killed it in
the end . The closing years of Converse's checkered career were spent
in San Francisco as a curbstone broker and mining expert , pursuing
such a precarious course that not infrequently he was on the verge of
starvation . To hail a former Fresno acquaintance was like clutching
at the straw by the drowning man , for it meant a temporary loan ,
never to be repaid , to hold off the gaunt wolf of hunger . A
perfunctory coroner's inquest with no relatives or acquaintances
attending , and with no effort at a positive identification of the
barely recognizable remains has left a doubt on which has been
impinged a far fetched belief , entertained by some , that he
returned to his native state and there ended his days a charge on the
bounty of an old negro " mammy " in Georgia . This is
manifestly incorrect for well is it remembered that A. H. Statham
financed Converse to go to Georgia to claim an inheritance . It was
thought he had been rid of for good and always , but the surprise was
when he returned to close a subsequent precarious career in San
Francisco . Extraordinary physical energies and activities ,
excellent intellectual abilities and fine social qualities were
combined in a strange make up , with many elements of goodness that
would have made him a useful and influen- tial citizen , had he not
lacked the regulating balance wheel of rigid principle , or perhaps
if his lot had not been cast among the turbulent and restless scenes
of early California life . Converse and Gaster are in unmarked graves
, yet singularly on the present site of Millerton stand , side by
side , only two structures of the days when they lived , monuments to
their memory - the courthouse that Converse built and the adobe
saloon where Folsom & Gaster held forth , and Payne after them .
Payne was shot in the leg in May , 1873 , and bled to death at Tripp
& Payne's store on the Tollhouse road to Humphrey & Mock's
mill . It was a wanton act , claimed to have been an accidental shot
after target pastime by John Williams , a negro , who in December ,
was sent to the penitentiary for two years for manslaughter . Payne
had sold his saloon to retire from business , and was buried at the
fort .
Charles Converse took up
timberlands here in the ’70s. He had come to California in 1849,
and was in the vicinity of Millerton about 1852. He ran a ferry
across the San Joaquin at what is now Friant until 1869. Built the
first jail in Fresno County, and was the first person confined in it.
(L. A. Winchell, George W. Stewart.)
Place
Names of the High Sierra
(1926) by Francis P. Farquhar
There is a sign on the Indian
Basin Grove Interpretive Trail which has information on Converse. It
also talks about his wife who eventually divorced him.
From the
Family
Search site:
When Charles Portor
Converse was born on 13 November 1829, in Detroit, Wayne, Michigan
Territory, United States, his father, Elijah Damon Converse, was 39
and his mother, Rebecca Abbott, was 37. He married Eunice Charlotte
Henderson on 21 February 1869, in Fresno, California, United States.
They were the parents of at least 2 sons. He lived in Columbus,
Franklin, Ohio, United States in 1850 and Fresno, California, United
States in 1880. He died on 21 December 1904, in San Francisco, San
Francisco, California, United States, at the age of 75, and was
buried in Oakland, Alameda, California, United States.
From Fresno County's write-up
on
Lost Lake:In
1852, Charles Converse established the Converse Ferry near the north
end of the present campground. Converse would go on to design and
construct the first Fresno County Courthouse that is located at
Millerton Lake. Converse Ferry would change names several times
before being named the community of Friant.
Forty - two years a
bachelor , the marriage of Dr. Leach in 1872 to Mrs. Mathilda
Converse , former wife of C. P. Converse , was an event as fortuitous
as was his decision to remain in Fresno when he had resolved to
return east . He was a boarder with Mrs. Converse . She had decided
to give up catering to boarders and not knowing where to find a home
table he proposed marriage and was accepted . The Leach residence in
Fresno City was for years on K street ( officially designated Van
Ness Avenue ) on the location now occupied by the Sequoia Hotel .
Hoist.
There is a sign on the Indian Basin Grove Interpretive Trail which
talks about a Roy Rob Hoist. Hoist operated a mechanical donkey used
to drag the Sequoias to a flume so they could go down and be cut. I
am assuming that Roy Rob Hoist is who this ridge is named after.
Within the
Centennial
of the Sequoia National Forest
there is a paragraph which says: Hoists
were used, along with log chutes, to transport logs to mills, rough
sawn lumber to the drying yards, and to the flumes. Converse Hoist
was located on Hoist Ridge. Remnants of the hoists, such as the Rob
Roy hoist, and evidence of the chutes can be seen today in some
areas. This
indicates there may not have been a connection with the name of Roy
Rob. But it does indicate that Hoist Ridge was named after the hoist
which moved the logs along the ridge.
