[2] John Muir in some words he wrote in 1875 on Yosemite, but did not publish until 1890, described the sequoia groves in the upper drainage of the north fork of the Tule River (i.e., the Mountain Home Grove) as "the finest block of Sequoia in the entire belt".

Fortunately, pioneers John Doyle and Jesse Hoskins in the 1880s acquired separate tracts of land in the heart of these big trees, Doyle for a time operating a resort here that he called "Summer Home", and Hoskins simply hoping to save the big trees from being cut down.

Today Doyle's "Summer Home" is part of Balch Park, a Tulare County Park; and much of the surrounding forest, including Hoskins' stand of trees, are part of a California State conservation project known as the Mountain Home State Demonstration Forest.

The Mountain Home Grove on 15 April 2000 became part of the newly created Giant Sequoia National Monument, under the management of the U.S. Forest Service, with Balch Park continuing under jurisdiction of Tulare County, and the State Demonstration Forest remaining under control of the State of California.

[5][8] Hoskins and Doyle identified and named many of the big trees in the Mountain Home Grove, but a century later retired mathematics teacher Wendell Flint, with the help of photographer Mike Law, began searching for large sequoias that the early tree hunters had overlooked.