The Volunteer Park Giant Sequoia

The only measurements ever published about this sequoia are not measurements of this sequoia. The city's own tree walk, which lists it as stop 9 on the north east loop of Volunteer Park, describes it growing to 280 feet with a trunk 26 feet through. Those are the figures for the species, the largest tree on earth by volume, and nobody has put a tape around this particular trunk. What the leaflet does confirm is the tree: a good giant sequoia standing near East Highland Drive, with the thick spongy bark that is the easiest way to identify one, and the only way to identify one without looking up. Its age is unrecorded. Volunteer Park was landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers between 1904 and 1912, and it is tempting to date the sequoia from that work, but no source connects this tree to it, so it stays undated here rather than dated by association. Which means there is a question on this page that somebody in Capitol Hill can answer. If you have a planting record, a nursery receipt, an old photograph of this corner of the park or simply a tape measure and a free afternoon, tell us and we will fill the gap in. The pin marks the north east corner of the park rather than the tree.