The Sentinel Tree has moved up the rankings by standing still. It was counted the 43rd largest giant sequoia known, and may now be 41st or 42nd, because the fires of 2015 to 2017 killed trees that stood above it. It is also the easiest giant in the park to reach. It stands on the plaza in front of the Giant Forest Museum, with no walk at all from the car park, and the Park Service has laid a ruler along the sidewalk so you can pace out its height on the ground. That height is 78.5 metres. The trunk is 7.65 metres across at chest height, which works out at roughly 24 metres round, and it holds about 790 cubic metres of wood. Two burn scars mark its base, the record of fires it lived through long before anyone was counting. In September 2021 the KNP Complex fire came toward the Giant Forest. Firefighters wrapped the museum and the sequoias around it, and the fire stopped short of the grove. We have not found a dated sighting of this particular tree since, so if you stand under it, tell us how it looks. Nobody has published an age for it either. Size is what it offers, and it offers it at the door: General Sherman, the largest of them all, stands under three kilometres to the north-east, and the Sentinel is the giant you meet before you have even set off.
This tree looks much the same in every month of the year, so there is no season to chart.
In front of the Giant Forest Museum, Generals Highway, Sequoia National Park, California You can recognise it by its place: the giant sequoia on the plaza in front of the Giant Forest Museum, with a ruler laid along the sidewalk marking its 78.5 metre height. Two burn scars mark its base.
Park entry fee; the tree stands at the museum plaza and can be walked right up to; a sidewalk ruler in the plaza marks its height (NPS).
Drive only in practice; shuttle in season to the museum (not checked); zero walking from the museum car park.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
