From the shops, restaurants and accommodation at Giant Forest Village, Crescent Meadow Road leads south, passing a short loop road to the Auto Log, sawn flat enough to drive a car on to it, and another to the Tunnel Log, a fallen sequoia with a hole cut through it large enough to drive through. 

Such crass exploitation of the forest marked the early years of tourism in Sequoia National Park. A different kind of usage can be seen just beyond Crescent Meadow (a verdant expanse of grassland framed by towering trees) at the slightly smaller Log Meadow, where cattle farmer Hale Tharp built a makeshift cabin in the 1860s by hollowing out the end of a fallen sequoia. Known as Tharp’s Log, the cabin can still be seen on the numerous signposted short trails which begin at the end of Crescent Meadow Road.

Detour – Moro Rock

A stone staircase winds to the 6,725-ft summit of Moro Rock, a gigantic hunk of granite perched on the edge of a hillside and which, visited during the early evening, offers a fabulous view of the sunset across California’s vast Central Valley.