Giant Forest
Once established on the ground, Dorst turned to exploring the rugged reaches of the new reservation. Almost before he could start, however, he ran into the problem that would dominate his first summer in the park—the Kaweah Colony's attempt to cut sequoias at Atwell's Mill. Arrested and convicted for their efforts to cut trees at Colony Mill, the determined remnants of the colony regrouped after the trial in Los Angeles. On May 1, barely two weeks after the end of the trial, they signed a one-year lease allowing them to log on the 160-acre Atwell Tract along the Mineral King Road. Logging had begun among the sequoias at Atwell's Mill during the last days of the Mineral King silver rush, but the mill never really produced much owing to its remote location. Now, under the leadership of Irwin Barnard, who negotiated the lease for the remaining colonists, another attempt was to be made to make Atwell's Mill profitable. At risk was the existence of the colony itself, for since the loss of their Giant Forest lands the whole enterprise had fallen into doubt. In the way stood Captain Dorst and the U.S. Army, reluctant agents of the new and still vague national park idea. On the scene again was Congressman Vandever's man, General Land Office Special Agent Andrew Cauldwell. Cauldwell learned of the colony's lease of Atwell's about June 1, while he was looking into the organization of the new Yosemite National Park. On June 12, Cauldwell talked with Dorst at his Mineral King camp. Cauldwell told Dorst that under the rules and regulations the secretary of the interior had decreed for the park the previous fall, the felling of standing timber, even on patented land, should not be allowed.
