The Jardine Juniper is often said to be 3,000 years old. Cores taken in the 1950s said about 1,500. It is a Rocky Mountain juniper only about 12 metres tall with a trunk 7.2 metres round, found in 1923 on a ridge above Logan Canyon, and the walk to it is a day: about 11 miles there and back from Wood Camp on US-89.
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Rocky Mountain Juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) · 1,500 years · Logan Canyon
Hikers will tell you the Jardine Juniper is 3,000 years old. The wood disagrees: cores taken in the 1950s put it at about 1,500, a figure the state's own tourism site repeats. Half the legend is still a very old tree.
Maurice Blood Linford found it in 1923 on a ridge above Logan Canyon and named it after William Marion Jardine. It is not tall, about 12 metres, but the trunk measures 7.2 metres round. At 1,500 years it was already old when the first Europeans reached North America.
Whether it is still alive is a fair question, and the answer is thinner than we would like. Visit Utah reports a small bunch of greenery in the upper branches and says it is still alive, but the article carries no date, and we have found no dated sighting of the tree since 2020. If you make the climb, tell us what you see up there.
And it is a climb. The Jardine Juniper Trail starts at the Wood Camp Campground trailhead on US-89, where parking is paid, and runs about 11 miles there and back with roughly 2,145 feet of gain, by Visit Utah's figures. It is open all year, but the shady side holds snow and mud well into spring.
Photo: Danielle Philli (CC BY 2.0)