When George W. Littlefield planted a cedar beside his house in 1893, the story goes, he did not trust Texas dirt with it. The cattle baron, later a regent of the University of Texas, had the young deodar brought from the western Himalayas and, by the account the university's alumni magazine has repeated ever since, had the planting hole backfilled with Himalayan soil as well. Whether the soil made the difference or not, the tree took. More than 130 years later it stands on the lawn of Littlefield House at 24th Street and Whitis Avenue, 335 centimetres round and close to 18 metres tall at the Texas Big Tree Registry's last measurement in 2021. It is often called the only one of its kind in Austin, and it is one of the most photographed trees on the Forty Acres. It has watched the campus fill in around it. The house passed to the university and onto the National Register; the open ground around it became quads, towers and the traffic of the Drag one block west. The ranking is where the sources part ways. The university's news office called it the state's number two while quoting a forester who credited it with the largest girth of its kind in Texas; the facilities department, in 2023, called it the second largest deodar in the state. Somewhere in the top two, then, which is plenty for a tree that arrived with its own soil.
Littlefield House lawn, southwest corner of West 24th Street and Whitis Avenue, University of Texas at Austin campus You can recognise it by its needles: a conifer, not an oak, with a trunk about 3.35 metres round and close to 18 metres tall. It stands on the lawn of Littlefield House, at the corner of 24th Street and Whitis Avenue.
Free. Stands on the lawn of the historic Littlefield House at a public street corner on UT Austin's main campus; the campus grounds and quads are open to visitors during the day, no permission needed.
On the UT Austin campus at 24th Street and Whitis Avenue, about a 20-25 minute walk north from the Texas Capitol. Capital Metro bus routes and the UT shuttle stop one block west on Guadalupe Street (the Drag).
