What is the oldest tree in Sequoia National Park?
Sequoia National Park's oldest known tree is probably not General Sherman, its most famous one. That title likely belongs to The President, a giant sequoia on the Congress Trail dated at roughly 3,200 years by a detailed 2011-2012 measuring campaign, against Sherman's more commonly cited 2,300 to 2,700 (older estimates for Sherman also reach 3,200). Neither tree has been cored, so read both figures as careful estimates rather than counts. The President stands a short, paved walk from the Sherman Tree parking lot, about 140 feet from the Chief Sequoyah Tree.
Sequoia National Park charges an entrance fee at the gate. Once you are through, the tree costs nothing. There is no public transport into the park, and the nearest town is Three Rivers, about 45 minutes' drive from the entrance. The thing worth knowing before you arrive is that the fame is about bulk, not height. At 83.6 metres General Sherman is an ordinary tall sequoia. At about 31 metres round the base it is not, and the roughly 1,487 cubic metres of trunk is what makes it the largest living single-stem tree on the planet. A short walk from the Sherman Tree parking lot, the paved Congress Trail loops past five more measured giants: the President, likely the true elder of the group at roughly 3,200 years; the Chief Sequoyah and Lincoln trees, both ranked among the ten largest sequoias on Earth depending on how the measurers count; and the Franklin and Washington trees, standing together at 1,800 metres, one of which lost half its height to a 2005 snow load and kept growing regardless.
One of Sequoia National Park's trees also appears in The Tallest Trees We Have Measured.