Raymond Yelland painted this cypress in 1879, and he was early rather than first. The Old Veteran has been one of the most painted and photographed trees on the Monterey Peninsula ever since, which is an odd career for a tree with almost nothing to stand on. It grips a rock outcrop at the cliff edge above a cove at Point Lobos, roots into granite, branches worked over by the onshore wind. The best age anyone offers is probably 200 to 250 years, from an observer writing in 2024, and it stays a range because nobody has dated it. Much higher figures circulate for this tree; none of them has been confirmed, and repeating one here would be guessing with a decimal point. Set a recent photograph beside an older one and the tree is visibly thinner. A prominent limb has gone, and the same 2024 visit described it as looking increasingly stressed. It was alive and standing on that visit, which is the most recent word on it. Point Lobos is a state reserve, so this one costs a parking fee and a walk on a public trail rather than a toll gate. It is about twenty minutes south of Monterey by car, near Carmel: an old cypress on the last few metres of land before the Pacific, still holding on.
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Getting there
Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, near Headland Cove, Carmel Highlands, California
You can recognise it by its footing: it grows straight out of bare rock on an outcrop at the cliff edge above Headland Cove, and it has lost one prominent limb since the older photographs of it were taken.
Free (state park day-use fee applies for parking), on a public trail within Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, clinging to a rocky outcrop at the edge of a cliff above a cove. Not in the city of Monterey itself: about a 20-minute drive south, near Carmel-by-the-Sea; no reliable direct public transit, best reached by car.
Car; about 20 minutes from downtown Monterey via CA-1 south
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Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
