Hale Tharp

Hale Dixon Tharp was a miner during the California Gold Rush, and the first non-Native American settler to enter Giant Forest, in what is now Sequoia National Park.

In 1851, a widow from Illinois, Chloe Ann Smith Swanson, hired Tharp to take her and her four sons to California in a covered wagon with two teams of oxen.

[1] Tharp then began mining in California's Gold Country.

[2] In the summer of 1856, Tharp went to Tulare County to establish a preemption homestead, with the intent to return later to ranch cattle.

Hale Tharp, along with stepsons George and John Swanson, were the first non-Native American settlers known to ascend the granite dome Moro Rock.