The Big Tree (Williamson Bur Oak)

When Lewis and Clark came up the Missouri in 1804, this bur oak was already about two hundred years old. It is still standing in the river bottoms near McBaine: 7.3 metres around, 27 metres tall, a crown 40 metres across, tied as national champion of its species and Missouri's state champion since 1987. Sources put its start somewhere in the 1600s and its age between 350 and 400 years, with no ring count behind either figure. It has taken lightning strikes and sat through the floods of 1993 and 1995 that drowned much of this floodplain, and a professional arborist keeps an eye on it. In May 2026 COMO Magazine described it as about as healthy as a nearly four-century-old tree can be. The land belongs to the Williamson family and has for six generations, which means six generations have left it standing in the middle of good bottomland rather than in a fencerow. Boone County made it an official historic site in August 2021, the only tree in the county with that status. Bur Oak Road runs past it and the Katy Trail passes within yards, so cyclists have been stopping here for years without anyone organising it. Free, no gate, and you see it from the road before you reach it, because there is nothing else of that size in the field.