What is the oldest tree in Dallas?
The oldest tree in Dallas on this list is the Centennial Tree, a bur oak in Reverchon Park estimated at over 250 years, which puts it on that ground long before the city existed. It takes its name from the 1936 Texas Centennial celebration held at its foot. The bur oak beside Big Spring in the Great Trinity Forest is close behind at over 235 years, and stands next to the water source that drew people to this bend of the Trinity in the first place.
Dallas was founded in 1841, so any tree here older than about 185 years was already standing when the first cabin went up, and two on this page are. Both are bur oaks, which is not a coincidence: the species is the one that holds on in the blackland prairie and along the Trinity bottoms, and it lives for centuries where the post oaks and pecans around it turn over faster. Ages in Texas come from the Texas Historic Tree Coalition and the state's Big Tree Registry, and both work from measured girth and growth rate rather than from ring counts, so treat every number on this page as a careful estimate rather than a birthday. What Dallas does have, unusually, is documentation of what it has lost. A state champion black willow at White Rock Lake was cut down by mistake in 2015, three Comanche marker trees have died since 1998, and a cottonwood at the Texas Discovery Gardens was removed as a hazard and turned into sculpture. None of those is on this list, because this list is living trees.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.