The Lone Fir

A whole cemetery is named after this one Douglas fir, for a quality it no longer has: being alone. When Colburn Barrell founded the burial ground it was called Mount Crawford Cemetery. In 1866 it was renamed Lone Fir, the name chosen by his wife, Aurelia Barrell, for the solitary Douglas fir standing in its northwest corner. That is this tree. Wikipedia and Portland Monthly tell the naming story independently, and Portland Monthly in 2010 called it the cemetery's 150-year-old namesake. The joke is what happened next. The grounds filled with plantings over the following century and a half, and Lone Fir now works as Portland's second-largest arboretum, so the tree the place was named for is today one tree among a great many. The city's register measures it at 33 metres tall and 4.18 metres round, with a crown about 19 metres across, and in 2009 the city designated it a heritage tree. It is one of three trees in the cemetery with that designation. The others are an incense cedar on the north side, a short walk east, and a bigleaf maple named for Joseph Lane. Sources put the fir at over 150 years. Being the reason for the name, it was already standing in 1866, and has stood over every grave dug here since. The cemetery is open during posted daylight hours and the grounds are owned by Metro, the regional government.