Ticket needed. Paid entry (Sequoia National Park entrance fee); a short, partly paved, downhill walk from the main parking lot (uphill on the return, or use the seasonal shuttle).
General Sherman Tree
roughly 2,300 to 2,700 yearsGiant Sequoia
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.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. No public transit; the nearest town is Three Rivers, CA, about 45 minutes' drive from the park entrance.
- Species
- Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum)
- Age estimate
- roughly 2,300 to 2,700 years
- Location
- Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park, Tulare County, California (Giant Forest, on the Main Trail, about 0.5 miles from the Wolverton/Sherman Tree parking lot)
- Access
- Paid entry (Sequoia National Park entrance fee); a short, partly paved, downhill walk from the main parking lot (uphill on the return, or use the seasonal shuttle).
- Getting there
- No public transit; the nearest town is Three Rivers, CA, about 45 minutes' drive from the park entrance.
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
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