Outlook Magazine - Fall 2023

The Stout Memorial Grove

The company’s West Coast logging operations never took off, leaving massive redwoods and other virgin timber virtually untouched. In 1929, Frank’s widow, Clara, donated 44 acres of forest giants to the state. Today, the Stout Memorial Grove in Jedediah Smith State Park, north of Crescent City, is considered one of the “world’s most scenic stands of redwoods,” according to the website Redwood Hikes. “It doesn’t have the biggest trees, but for sheer photogenic beauty nothing beats this extraordinary grove … with an otherworldly, cathedral-like majesty.”

Along with founding UW-Stout in 1891, James H. Stout (1848-1910) impacted Wisconsin as a businessman, politician, civic leader and philanthropist. The second generation executive in the Menomonie based Knapp-Stout lumber empire also was part owner, with his brother, Frank, and others of a 1902 fledgling lumber company, Del Norte, in northwestern California.

In honor of the donation, the largest tree in the grove, a 300-footer, is named the Stout Tree.

32

33

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT

OUTLOOK 2023