Grant Park Guardian

Heritage registers are usually dry reading. Spokane's gives this horse chestnut a job title: it calls the tree a guardian and greeter at the southeast entrance to Grant Park, and that is the name it goes by. The job description fits. The register puts it at 75 feet, about 23 metres, on the park's East 11th Avenue edge. Horse chestnuts are a European species, not native to Washington, so this is a tree somebody chose for a park gate and the gate has kept it. The city's listing gives its age as about 90. That figure was set when the tree was listed some years ago and nobody has re-measured since, so it is older now; somewhere from the mid-80s to past a century is the honest range. The register records no girth. If you have ever put a tape round it, tell us. It was still standing in September 2025, when a naturalist logged a horse chestnut at the spot. Come in May. That is when the tree carries its white flower candles upright over the whole crown, and a greeter at a gate earns its title. In autumn the conkers come down in their spiny cases. The park is free and open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., like every city park in Spokane, with street parking on East 11th.