The White Oak of McClaughrey Springs Woods

This white oak is 4.76 metres round at chest height, more than half a metre thicker than the county's champion white oak, and it still ranks second. The Forest Preserves of Cook County measured it in June 2024. What it lacks is height. The champion at Red Gate Woods, about five kilometres to the northwest, is thinner at 4.21 metres but stands 29.3 metres tall. This one stops at 21, with a crown about 21 metres one way and 17 the other. Short and heavy against tall and even: the register prefers the second, a visitor may well prefer the first. For comparison, the Devil's Den Witness Tree at Gettysburg, another white oak on our map, is 4.11 metres round. The Ruxton Liberty Tree in Baltimore, at 5.49, and the Travilah Oak near Washington, at 5.82, are bigger still, but McClaughrey Springs' oak is in that company. The surveyors left two notes. It stands at the edge of a trail, which makes it easy to reach. And it shows some branch dieback, which is worth knowing before you go and worth telling us about if you see it worsen. The register gives no age, and nobody has dated this oak. If you know how old it is, tell us.