The Kaweah Colony: Utopia in the Sequoias

In eighteen eighty five, a group of utopian socialists from San Francisco arrived in the mountains above Three Rivers with a plan to build a cooperative community and harvest the giant sequoias. The group was organized by Burnette G. Haskell, a labor organizer and newspaper publisher, and formally incorporated as the Kaweah Colony in eighteen eighty eight.

At its peak it had several hundred national members, though typically only about one hundred fifty people lived on site at any one time. The colony operated on a time-check system. Workers were paid in paper checks denominated in units of time rather than dollars, and those checks could only be spent at the colony store.

Members lived communally, published a newspaper called The Kaweah Commonwealth, and worked on what became their most ambitious project: building a road to the giant sequoias. The Colony Mill Road, construction of which began in October of eighteen eighty six, eventually stretched eighteen miles from the canyon floor to Giant Forest. It took four years to complete.

When the colonists finally reached the sequoias in the summer of eighteen ninety, they began logging. In an act that says everything about their politics, they renamed the tree now known as General Sherman after the socialist theorist Karl Marx. They had almost no time to log.

President Benjamin Harrison signed Sequoia National Park into law on September twenty fifth, eighteen ninety, making it the first national park created specifically to protect a living organism. The colonists' land claims were instantly voided. A federal court convicted several of them of illegal logging in April of eighteen ninety one.

The colony disbanded in January of eighteen ninety two. Their road became the foundation of the Generals Highway. Their squatter's cabin still stands inside the park.