In their pursuit of the finest beaver pelts, the trappers moved ever deeper into the interior, from the shores of the Hudson Bay, across that great expanse of unexplored land rich in streams and meadows to the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. Their journey brought them through the Sierra Nevada to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

As they passed through the Sierra Nevada range to the western slopes, they came upon and viewed with unbelieving eyes the "Big Trees"... the giant sequoias. They were amazed and awestruck at the enormous size of the trees towering hundreds of feet above the ground reaching for the sky. The immensity of the giant sequoias whose trunks dwarfed both men and horses is the subject of my painting, "In the Land of the Giants".

While the fur trappers did not find the huge numbers of beaver in California that they had hoped for, they did discover the passages and trails through the mountains. Little did they realize then that these pathways through the Sierra Nevada range would prove valuable. Years later, as the demand for beaver ebbed and the fur trade ended, this knowledge would serve them well as they became the trail blazers and guides for the wagon trains and pioneers as they crossed the land to Oregon and California.

- Paul Calle