What is the oldest tree in San Antonio?
San Antonio's oldest tree is the bald cypress on the River Walk known as the Ben Milam Cypress, over 200 years old and 762 centimetres round. It stands downtown between the Commerce Street and Houston Street bridges, free to see from the public path at any hour.
The cypress is the only one of the city's four verified trees whose age runs past two centuries, and even there the figure is a floor rather than a measurement. What ties it to 1835 is local tradition: the shot that killed Ben Milam during the Siege of Bexar is said to have come from its branches, and at over 200 years old the tree was certainly already standing that December. The Alamo's Big Tree is the one people assume is older and is not. The nurseryman Walter Whall dug it up from a ranch outside town in 1912 or 1913, already around forty years old, and hauled it whole to the Convento Courtyard, which puts it at roughly 155 to 160 years today. The other two are champions by size rather than age. Trinity University's Mexican sycamore is the largest in Texas and only about forty years old, and the Texas mountain laurel on the University of the Incarnate Word grounds holds the state title at 9.8 metres tall for a plant most Texans know as a shrub. All four are free to visit.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.