Hercules (tree)

A wealthy rancher from Lindsay, California, named Jesse Hoskins (1849–1908) in 1884 purchased an eighty-acre tract of giant sequoia trees in the southern Sierra Nevada from the United States government and named it Camp Lena.

Hoskins, who spent his summers among the Camp Lena sequoias, chose biblical and classical themed names for the largest trees, and placed wooden name plates twenty feet off the ground on many of the better-known ones.

Hoskins tried living in this room, but it leaked sap, so he made it into a gift shop where he sold redwood trinkets made of wood left over from carving out the room.

[1][2] The Camp Lena tract remained in Hoskins' family until 1913, when it was sold.

Although timber sales in 1956 resulted in some logging that was condemned by the Sierra Club, the Hercules Tree and various other large redwoods in the immediate vicinity were exempted.

The Hercules Tree in the Mountain Home Grove has a large room cut into it.
1902 photo of the entrance to Jesse Hoskins' Hercules Tree.