What is the oldest tree in Spokane?
Spokane's oldest mapped trees are the Ancient Douglas Firs of Indian Canyon, three old-growth firs on the cliff edge above Mystic Falls. The city's lead arborist, Jeff Perry, put the largest at around 400 years in 2019, saying his own arms could not reach a third of the way around its trunk.
The estimate rests on one account rather than a ring count: a 2019 Spokesman-Review feature in which Perry said measuring the tree properly is not really possible, because its roots are holding the edge of the cliff together. No girth has ever been published for any of the three. What makes the survival plausible is straightforward: Douglas fir with a sharply tapering trunk makes poor lumber, so logging crews that took nearly all the old growth out of the hills around Spokane left these three standing on the canyon rim. Four centuries of age would put their germination in the early 1600s, which means they were already more than two centuries old when Chief Spokane Garry, whose last campsite stood a short walk away, died in 1892. Nothing else on this page comes close to that age: the next oldest, a state-champion white willow at Finch Arboretum, is put at only 90 to 100 years, and the city says plainly it may not have thirty more.
One of Spokane's trees also appears in Autumn Worth the Trip, a themed collection spanning several cities.