Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, California
Why We Love It: This forest is home to the world's largest tree, the giant sequoia. The national park has the greatest concentration of giant sequoias groves in the world. You're even able to camp among the towering trees on campgrounds or in cabins.
Sequoia National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California. The park was established on September 25, 1890 to protect 404,064 acres (631 sq mi; 163,519 ha; 1,635 km2) of forested mountainous terrain. Encompassing a vertical relief of nearly 13,000 feet (4,000 m), the park contains the highest point in the contiguous United States, Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 m) above sea level. UNESCO designated the areas as Sequoia-Kings Canyon Biosphere Reserve in 1976.
Sequoia & Kings Canyon Camping Facilities
Camping in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks is a natural way to connect with this Sierra paradise. There’s a reward in roughing it. And with all the camp services and amenities on hand, well, it’s not even that rough!
The National Park Service operates all campgrounds in Sequoia & Kings Canyon. Advance reservations are available for Lodgepole and Dorst campgrounds; all others are first-come, first-served. Regardless of which Sequoia & Kings Canyon campground you choose, it will be provisioned with picnic tables, fire grills, and bear-proof storage boxes.
Most campgrounds here will have markets, showers, laundry facilities, restaurants, and gift shops just a short drive away (and great national park lodging if the ground is keeping you up at night).
*Note - Markets and facilities in the Cedar Grove area open later and close earlier than the campgrounds do. View hours of operation for seasonal concessions facilities.
Please Note: Kings Canyon and Sequoia camping sites do not offer RV hookups.
Camping in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
There are 14 campgrounds in the parks. Most are first-come, first-served with a maximum of six people allowed per site. Potwisha, Buckeye Flat, Lodgepole, Dorst Creek, and certain group campsites are open to reservations and can accommodate from 7-50 people.
Campsite Amenities: Each campsite has a picnic table, fire ring with grill and a metal food storage box. There are no hookups in the parks. Dump stations are located at Potwisha, Lodgepole, and Dorst Creek campgrounds. There is also a dump station located in Princess Campground in the Sequoia National Forest on Hwy 180 near the Hume Lake junction.
11 Things You Didn’t Know about Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
1. Sequoia was the first park created to protect a living organism. Found only in the unique environment of the western Sierra, the massive sequoia trees grow at between 5,000 and 8,000 feet in elevation. The relatively mild winters at that elevation, along with a traditional history of fire, has made the mid-Sierra zone the perfect habitat for sequoias. To protect the giant sequoias from logging, Sequoia National Park was established in 1890.
2. Before Kings Canyon, there was General Grant National Park. A week after Sequoia was created in 1890, General Grant National Park was established to protect the sequoias in the General Grant Grove. In 1940, Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a new national park called Kings Canyon that incorporated the area of General Grant National Park with the spectacular canyons and high Sierra country to the east. Since Kings Canyon’s roots go back to General Grant National Park, it shares the title of our country’s third national park with Yosemite National Park.
3. Fire and proactive forest management play a unique role in the parks. Science has taught us the importance of fire’s role in the ecosystem in places like Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Heat from low-intensity fires allows sequoia cones to open and drop their seeds in the fresh ash bed -- seeds the size of an oatmeal flake! Sequoia and Kings Canyon were the first national parks west of the Mississippi to use prescribed burning as way to not only protect, but to ensure the long-term survival and rejuvenation of giant sequoias. Active fire and fuels management started here in the 1960's and is a practice that is used today to reduce hazardous fuel loads and to maintain a healthy forest.
4. Sequoia is home to the tallest mountain in the lower 48. Towering 14,494 feet, Mount Whitney lies on the eastern border of Sequoia National Park and Inyo National Forest. While Mount Whitney is a sight to see, a mountain ridge called the Great Western Divide blocks its view from Sequoia’s roads on the west side. The best place to view Mount Whitney without hiking a long way is the Interagency Visitor Center on Highway 395.
5. Sequoias are some of the largest and oldest trees in the world. These massive trees can live for over 3,000 years thanks to a chemical in their bark called tannin, which helps to protect against rot, boring insects and even fire. These magnificent trees can grow as tall as a 26-story building, averaging between 180 and 250 feet tall. The most famous resident of Sequoia National Park -- the General Sherman Tree -- stretches almost 275 feet tall and over 36 feet in diameter, making it the largest tree in the world by volume. Learn more about some of the other remarkable trees you can see on public lands.
6. Most of these parks are wilderness. Over the past 125 years, Congress has expanded Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to 1,353 square miles -- of which over 95 percent is designated and managed as wilderness. The parks’ wilderness protects areas from the foothills to the high country that teem with granite peaks and glacial canyons for visitors to explore.
8. The parks’ wide elevation range hosts diverse ecosystems and wildlife habitat. The parks stretch from 1,300 feet in the foothills to 14,494 feet in the high Sierra -- an amazing elevational range that creates a topographic diversity supporting over 1,200 species of vascular plants and over 315 different species of animals across elevation zones. Some of these stunning animals include peregrine falcons, black bears, and even the western and mountain bluebirds. The parks also contain some of the widest array of pines, from the massive sugar pine to the ponderosa pine and the high-elevation foxtail and whitebark pines.
The rest of the article you can find here:
https://www.doi.gov/blog/11-things-you-didnt-know-about-sequoia-and-kings-canyon-national-parks
The original article and story here:
https://www.visitsequoia.com/explore/trip-planner/camping
and
https://www.visitcalifornia.com/attraction/lodging-camping-sequoia-kings-canyon
Thanks for reading