The largest known juniper in the United States stands in Sardine Meadow, at the end of a rough Forest Service road in the Stanislaus National Forest. The Bennett Juniper is about 3.9 metres across and 24 metres tall, and cores taken in the 1930s and again in 1989 both put it near 3,000 years, though the hollow trunk keeps the full count out of reach. It survived the 2018 Donnell Fire, and since 2022 its three acres belong to the Mother Lode Land Trust.
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Grand Juniper (Juniperus grandis) · 3,000 years · Sardine Meadow
The largest known juniper in the United States stands in a three-acre clearing at the end of a rough forest road. By the American Forests points formula the Bennett Juniper scores 573: a trunk about 3.9 metres across and 24 metres tall.
How old it is depends on who you ask. A core taken in the 1930s by Glock suggested about 3,000 years; another, taken in 1989 by Peter Brown, said almost 3,000. Neither could reach the middle, because the tree is partly hollow. The man it is named after, Bennett, believed it was over 6,000 years old, by extrapolation rather than by any core. Read 3,000 as the best working figure and the rest as a dispute that cannot be settled without the missing wood.
Even its species has moved. It was long counted a western juniper; the USDA now places it in the grand juniper, and a 2001 University of California Press book calls it a mountain juniper. It came through the 2018 Donnell Fire, and in November 2022 the ground passed to the Mother Lode Land Trust, which looks after it as a preserve inside Stanislaus National Forest.
Most of what we know comes from one family of sources, so take the details as reported rather than settled. Getting there takes high clearance on unpaved Forest Service roads from the Pinecrest side, and snow closes them in winter. Entry is free.
Photo: Dave Bunnell (CC BY-SA 4.0)