Stump Meadow

Stump Meadow is a historic logging clearing in Converse Basin Grove, reached on Forest Road 13S55 on the way to Boole Tree. It sits in Sequoia National Forest, outside Kings Canyon National Park, but makes sense as part of the same Highway 180 excursion. What you’ll find are broad cut sequoia stumps among thousands of young trees.

The old stumps make the scale of logging visible; young, spiral-topped sequoias fill the meadow around them. The Forest Service describes the surrounding young trees as about 100 years old. This is a stop for reading the grove’s history in the landscape. For a photo, frame a stump against the young trees behind it: the contrast tells the story better than an empty clearing.

Converse Basin was privately owned and heavily logged in the late 1800s. The stumps left across the basin are more than scenery: their rings help researchers reconstruct past weather, fires and droughts. The oldest known stump in Converse Basin is just over 3,200 years old; that’s a basin-wide distinction, not a claim about a particular stump at the meadow.

From Highway 180, the signed Converse Basin turnoff is about five miles north of Grant Grove Village. Follow Forest Road 13S55 past an intersection to the meadow. This is a dirt-road outing, so conditions matter. The Forest Service recommends summer when the road is dry; its winter access advice is for cross-country skis or snowmobiles.