What does a city do when prized tree dies after nearly century? Here’s what Visalia did

The past few years had been particularly rough for Visalia’s Sequoia Legacy Tree.

A pattern of heavy winters and dry summers left the nearly 90-year-old tree susceptible to a particular type of fungus. Caretakers gave treatments to halt the infection, but to no avail.

The tree’s canopy went from green to auburn red.

In July, the tree stopped taking nutrients.

“People who drove past it could see very rapidly its decline,” says Suzanne Bianco, tourism and marketing director with Visit Visalia, the group responsible for getting the tree its legacy designation.

Last week, a crew cut down the tree and removed it from its spot outside the city’s downtown Post Office at Locust Street and Acequia Avenue.

Before that, Visit Visalia hosted a celebration of the tree’s life and legacy.

A crowd gathered to hear a history on the tree. Someone hung a drawing that showed the tree engulfed in a ray of sunshine as people held hands around its base. There was a drum circle and commemorative cards:

“Sequoia Legacy Tree; 1936-2025.”

A gateway to the Sequoia National Park

Originally, the tree was part of a set — two saplings taken from Grant’s Grove and wrapped in burlap sacks “to give it a fighting chance,” says Terry Ommen, a historian who was written extensively about Visalia.

The trees were planted unceremoniously by Guy Hopping, who was Superintendent of General Grant Park (now known Grant’s Grove in Kings Canyon National Park), and Nathan Levy, then the postmaster of Visalia. Hopping had a winter office in the basement of the Post Office building, according to the website Tulare County Treasures.

The trees were meant to remind residents of Visalia’s role as a gateway to the national park, Ommen says.

But time has a way of obscuring things, and most people probably never realized the connection with the park, he says. The second tree died in place in the 1980s and for years, Ommen says, the remaining Sequoia, “stood there as just another tree.”

Some of that was because the tree didn’t quite have that old Sequoia look people expect. While it stood at 65 feet tall, ”it was really still a baby.”

Sequoias (the giant ones) are some of the oldest on the planet, and in ideal conditions can live to be thousands of years old.

Visit Visalia christened the Sequoia as its Legacy Tree in 2018 to create an official and more visible tie between the city and the National Park Service, which had its centennial just two years prior.

“A lot of the important treks that people took into the Sequoias started and or ended in Visalia,” Ommen says.

In fact it was a Visalia newspaperman, George Stewart, who pushed for the creation the Sequoia and General Grant National Parks. “He knew a lot of influential people.”

What become of the monument?

Working with the Postal Service, Visit Visalia created a pocket park as a kind of monument around the tree. A granite walkway around the tree approximates the circumference of the famous General Sherman and demonstrates the enormity of Sequoias (and the difference in size between the Visalia tree and one grown in a natural habitat).

The monument will remain outside the post office, says Bianco, with Visit Visalia formulating ideas of how the remains of the tree could be repurposed and put back into the monument.

The remains were saved and will be kept in storage until final plans are made. People can submit ideas at visitvisalia.com/legacy.

“We don’t want it go into a chipper.”

This story was originally published March 1, 2025 at 5:30 AM.