What is the oldest tree in Tillamook?
The oldest tree at Tillamook is the Octopus Tree, a Sitka spruce of roughly 250 to 300 years at the Cape Meares State Scenic Viewpoint, a few minutes' walk from the lighthouse parking area about 20 minutes west of the town. It has no central trunk: six large limbs splay horizontally from a base roughly fifteen metres wide before turning vertical, and the base measures over fourteen metres round. Oregon lists it as a Heritage Tree, and it is free to visit.
Cape Meares State Scenic Viewpoint is on the headland about 20 to 25 minutes' drive west of Tillamook, and there is no public transport to it. Park at the Cape Meares Lighthouse parking area; the tree is a short, easy, well-marked walk from there, and none of it costs anything. The form is the reason to come. There is no central trunk. Six large limbs leave a base roughly fifteen metres across, run out horizontally for as much as five metres and then turn upward, which is how the tree collected its four names. The circumference at the base is over fourteen metres and the age is put at roughly 250 to 300 years. How it grew this way is unsettled. Local tradition holds that Native people trained the young spruce, and one version of that story says the limbs were meant to cradle canoes in burial rites. The account is debated and has never been confirmed. Oregon lists the tree as a Heritage Tree, which is a designation rather than an explanation.
See more themed collections of remarkable trees.