What is the oldest tree in Columbia, Missouri?
The oldest tree near Columbia is The Big Tree, officially the Williamson Bur Oak, standing on Bur Oak Road in the Missouri River bottoms near McBaine, a short drive southwest of the city. It is between 350 and 400 years old, sprouted some time in the 1600s, and measures 287 inches around, about 90 feet tall, with a crown 130 feet across, which has it tied as national champion bur oak and holding Missouri's state title since 1987. It has survived lightning strikes and the floods of 1993 and 1995, and an arborist keeps it under care; a May 2026 report described it as about as healthy as a nearly four-century-old tree can be. It stands on Williamson family land beside a public road, free to visit, with no gate.
The Big Tree stands on Bur Oak Road in the Missouri River bottoms near McBaine, southwest of Columbia. There is no admission, no gate and no visitor centre: it is a tree in a field beside a public road, on land the Williamson family has farmed for six generations. The Katy Trail State Park rail-trail passes within yards, so a good share of the people who see it arrive by bicycle, and the flat gravel of the trail is the pleasant way to do it. Boone County made it an official historic site in August 2021, the only tree in the county with that designation, and it has been Missouri's state champion bur oak since 1987 as well as a tied national champion. What that means in front of you is a trunk 7.3 metres around and a crown forty metres wide with nothing else near it, which is why you pick it out from the road well before you arrive. The bottomland here is soft after heavy rain. Autumn is when the acorns drop, and a bur oak's are the size that stops people.
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