The tallest known Douglas fir on Earth stood in the hills of Coos County until August 2025, when a fire nobody has explained burned for days in its crown. The Doerner Fir survived it, about fifteen metres shorter and no longer the record holder. It is roughly 450 years old and still among the tallest trees anywhere that are not redwoods. The trail in is short and marked; the road in is an hour of BLM forest road, the last stretch gravel and unmaintained in winter. Free, on public land.
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Doerner Fir
Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) · roughly 450 years · Doerner Fir Trailhead, reached via a mostly-paved BLM forest road with a final 4.5 miles of gravel
In August 2025 a fire nobody has explained burned for several days in the crown of this Douglas fir, and the tree survived it. Firefighters put the blaze out. The fir lost roughly fifty feet off its top and with it the record it had held for years as the tallest known Douglas fir on Earth. Before the fire it measured 325.8 feet, 99.3 metres, which put it among the tallest trees anywhere that are not redwoods. The height on this page, about 84 metres, comes from press coverage after the fire rather than from a survey; nobody has run a tape up it since, so treat it as approximate until someone does. It is roughly 450 years old, give or take fifty, which made it a large tree long before the logging that took nearly everything around it. It was the Brummit Fir until it was renamed for a Douglas County commissioner. Getting there is an honest part of the trip: about an hour from Roseburg on BLM roads, the last four and a half miles gravel and not maintained through winter, then a short marked trail from a proper trailhead with a register to sign. What waits at the end is now a scarred survivor rather than a record holder, which is arguably the better reason to walk in.
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