The Hiawatha Playfield Red Oak

This oak is 55 feet wider than it is tall. When the tree expert Arthur Lee Jacobson measured it for a 2023 newspaper column, he found a crown 133 feet across on a tree 78 feet high, over a trunk 15 feet 8 inches round. It is a northern red oak, a species from the other side of the continent, and it has spent its life at the edge of a playing field in West Seattle. Hiawatha Playfield opened in 1911, and the whole ground is now a city landmark. One local tree blog says this oak went in that year with the trees around it, when the Olmsted Brothers laid out what it calls Seattle's first playfield. That blog is the only source tying the tree to the opening, so read 1911 as likely rather than proven, which would make the oak a little over a century old. The city lists it as a Heritage Tree, the programme Seattle runs with the group PlantAmnesty. Jacobson's verdict in 2023 was that it is not even halfway to the 250 years the species can live. Most trees on a list like this are admired for having survived. This one is still growing into itself, mostly sideways. The pin marks the playfield rather than the trunk. Look toward the school side, and look for the crown first: it is the measurement you can see from a distance.