Genesis Tree

Before the 2020 Castle Fire, Genesis ranked seventh among the largest trees known on Earth. Then the fire came through Mountain Home Grove, and the figures on this page became history. The name came late. The tree surveyors Flint and Law named and measured it in 1985, a century after the neighbouring Adam Tree had been named, and promptly demoted Adam to second-largest in the grove. The last full measurement, from 2013, gave Genesis a height of 86.2 metres and a girth of 24.04 metres at chest height. Read both numbers as a record of the tree before the fire. It is shorter now, by an amount nobody has published. Two visitors who walked the grove in 2021 described the damage the same way: the top gone, many branches lost, the base badly burned. Neither said it was dead. That is also the most recent word we have; nothing written since 2023 says whether Genesis is holding on or declining. If you have seen it lately, we would like to know. The grove is part of a state demonstration forest run by CAL FIRE and is free to enter. It is a drive on mountain roads from Springville with no public transport, and we could not confirm the trail or the road's season, so check with CAL FIRE before you go. No age has been published for it either.