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Rockefeller Grove, Yosemite 

The King of Pines Sugar pine is the mightiest of the world’s pines, capable of attaining heights of more than 250 feet and diameters past eight feet. They also wield the longest pinecones: two feet long in some cases. John Muir called these trees “the priests of pines.” It’s pretty easy to pick out a sugar pine from the mixed-conifer forests of the mid-elevation Sierra where they best grow. For one thing, it has huge, sweeping boughs—even up close to the top of the tree. The enormous dangling cones can be seen even at a distance, and are quite conspicuous on the forest floor. The Rockefeller Grove Any visitor to Yosemite should check out the Rockefeller Grove someday, both for the stupendous old-growth sugar pines it harbors as well as the history it represents. The grove, near Crane Flat, was part of a 1930s purchase facilitated by the largesse of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (a great champion of national parks), which transferred a parcel owned by private timber companies to the National Park Service. Reach the Rockefeller Grove by following an old track across from the Merced Grove trailhead. It’s an easy, two-mile hike, snowshoe, or cross-country ski into the grove. The sugar pines aren’t all bunched together in pure stands, but rather scattered throughout the forest here.