General Sherman Tree
You need a ticket to see this treePark entry fee: $35 per private vehicle (valid 1-7 days; other passes accepted; non-US residents 16+ pay an extra $100 unless on an annual or America the Beautiful pass; the park takes no cash). The parks are open 24 hours a day (NPS), though facilities and roads vary with weather. The Main Trail starts at the Wolverton Road parking lot and runs half a mile (0.8 km) downhill, paved with a few stairs, and back uphill. Disability-placard holders can park at a small lot on Generals Highway with a short accessible trail; shuttles serve it in shuttle season. In snow the Wolverton lot closes and the Generals Highway lot opens to all, and the trail can be icy. Stay on the paved trail; a fence protects the roots.
In September 2021, with the KNP Complex Fire burning into the Giant Forest, park staff wrapped the base of this tree in aluminium foil. It worked. The fire came through the grove and the tree was unharmed. That is roughly the class of trouble a sequoia is built for. This one holds about 1,487 cubic metres of trunk, which makes it the largest known living single-stem tree on Earth, and the number doing the work is girth rather than height. At 83.6 metres it is a fairly ordinary tall sequoia. At about 31 metres round the base it is not. Its age is genuinely unsettled. Most estimates land between 2,300 and 2,700 years, older ones ran as high as 3,200, and nobody is going to core it to settle the argument, so both figures stay on this page. It stands on the Main Trail in the Giant Forest, about half a mile from the Sherman Tree parking lot. The walk down is short and part paved; the walk back is the uphill half, and a seasonal shuttle runs for anyone who would rather not. Sequoia National Park charges at the gate. Once you are through it, the most famous tree in the country costs nothing to stand in front of.
This tree looks much the same in every month of the year, so there is no season to chart.
Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park, Tulare County, CaliforniaYou can recognise it by its immense base, about 31 metres round, the largest trunk volume of any living tree on Earth. It stands on the Main Trail in the Giant Forest, near the Sherman Tree parking lot.
No public transit; the nearest town is Three Rivers, CA, about 45 minutes' drive from the park entrance.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
