The champion white oak of the Forest Preserves of Cook County is not the thickest white oak they have measured. It wins on everything else. When the register's surveyors measured it in May 2024, they recorded a trunk 4.21 metres round, a height of 29.3 metres and a crown about 23 metres across in both directions, nearly a perfect circle. The county's second-ranked white oak, at McClaughrey Springs Woods about five kilometres to the southeast, has the fatter trunk at 4.76 metres. It is also eight metres shorter and narrower in the crown, and the register puts Red Gate Woods first. Our map holds some famous white oaks to measure it against. The Devil's Den Witness Tree at Gettysburg is 4.11 metres round, a whisker thinner than this one. The Ruxton Liberty Tree in Baltimore reaches 5.49 metres and the Travilah Oak outside Washington 5.82. Red Gate Woods' champion does not match those two for girth. What it has is balance: height, trunk and crown together, enough to make it the county's champion. The register gives size, rank and site, and no age, and girth alone is a poor clock for an oak. Nobody has dated this one. If you know how old it is, or have a core count, tell us.
Red Gate Woods, Forest Preserves of Cook County, IllinoisYou can recognise it by the round, even crown, about 23 metres across both ways, over a 4.21 metre trunk and 29.3 metres of height. It stands at the register's point in Red Gate Woods.
Free, a Forest Preserves of Cook County site open to the public (register Public_Access: Yes).
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.