Kaweah Colony

The Kaweah Colony was a socialist commune in the area of Tulare County in the Sierra Nevada. The colony existed from 1886 to 1892 and was influenced by the writings of Laurence Gronlunds and Edward Bellamy. The Burnette G. Haskell of (1857-1907) and James J. Martin -led group settled down in 1886 on the banks of the Kaweah River. It included at no time more than 500 members, of which up to 300, only 50-75 members in Kaweah were mostly but present, while a portion lived in the eastern U.S. and Europe and the colony supported financially. The membership cost $ 500, which were paid at least $ 100 in cash and the rest could be provided in kind and labor services.

The municipality was planning the management of deciduous and giant sequoia stocks and began the construction of a road from a planned sawmill in the forest towards a pressing plant, where the wood should be processed further. The original plan of a railroad could not be financed.

The requested and already used some of logging licenses were refused as the Sequoia National Park was established on September 25, 1890, in the area things to come, the members of the Commune had settled as a squatter. Opposition proceedings and compensation claims were dismissed. The colonists were in 1891 expelled from the National Park and put on trial for illegal logging. This led in 1892 to the dissolution of the municipality. A relic of the Commune is a log cabin, the Squatter's Cabin, which was completed in 1977 on the National Register of Historic Places under monument protection.

The municipality named the General Sherman Tree discovered in 1879 by Karl Marx. The management of the National Park named the tree again to General Sherman. Some of the colonists continued to live after the dissolution in Tulare County.