The Ancient Douglas Firs of Indian Canyon

These firs are still standing because they were not worth cutting down. A Douglas fir whose trunk tapers sharply makes poor lumber, and the crews who took nearly all the old growth out of the hills around Spokane walked past three of them on the cliff edge above Mystic Falls. The largest is around 400 years old. That figure comes from Jeff Perry, the City of Spokane's lead arborist, who told the Spokesman-Review in 2019 that he could get his arms around perhaps a third of the trunk, and that measuring it properly is not really possible, because the tree's roots are holding the edge of the cliff together. That is the best description of it anyone has written. It is not so much standing on the canyon rim as being the canyon rim. Four centuries puts their germination in the early 1600s. Chief Spokane Garry's last campsite is a short walk from where they stand; he died in 1892, by which time these three were already more than two centuries old. One caution. All of this rests on a single newspaper feature, although a named city arborist with his arms around the trunk is better evidence than most trees get. No girth has ever been published, and the pin marks the trailhead rather than the trees.