Photo: Larry D. Moore (CC BY 4.0)
Roughly 500 to 600 years old.
Oldest trees in Texas
The oldest tree we map in Texas is Old Baldy in Austin, at more than 500 years. We map 29 trees across 6 places in Texas, each one researched and verified.
Texas remembers its trees by who stood under them. A Franciscan priest wrote about Austin's Old Baldy cypress in 1716. Sam Houston camped beside a Dallas bur oak in 1843 and slept under a live oak at Gonzales with the town burning behind him. Austin's first city lots were auctioned in 1839 in the shade of oaks that still stand on a downtown square, and the Treaty Oak survived a man pouring enough herbicide round its roots in 1989 to kill a hundred trees. The state also keeps a champion register, so beside the famous oaks stand trees that are simply the biggest of their kind anywhere in Texas: a mesquite ranchers would bulldoze, a jujube by a Fort Worth road, a yaupon most of the South clips into a hedge. Live oaks dominate, and they grow wider than they grow tall.
Every place we map in Texas
1Dallas9 trees2Houston6 trees3
Austin5 trees4Fort Worth4 trees5
San Antonio4 trees6Gonzales, Texas1 tree
Austin5 trees4Fort Worth4 trees5San Antonio4 trees6Gonzales, Texas1 tree16 species grow in Texas
Oaks Southern Live Oak 7 · Bur Oak 2 · Oak 2 · Texas Live Oak 2 · Texas Red Oak 2 · Mexican White Oak 1 · Post Oak 1
Elms and zelkovas Winged Elm 1
Planes Mexican Sycamore 1
Chestnuts, walnuts and hazels Pecan 3
Conifers Bald Cypress 2
More broadleaf trees Honey Mesquite 1 · Jujube 1 · Texas Ash 1 · Texas Mountain Laurel 1 · Yaupon Holly 1
The 10 oldest trees we map in Texas
Roughly 400 to 600 years old.
Roughly 250 to 300 years old.
Roughly 250 to 280 years old.
Roughly 235 to 260 years old.
Roughly 200 to 260 years old.
Roughly 190 to 300 years old.
Photo: Larry D. Moore (CC BY 4.0)
Roughly 190 to 300 years old.
Roughly 180 to 300 years old.
Roughly 165 to 190 years old.
Trees from Texas also appear in Autumn Worth the Trip · The Autumn Harvest · The Oldest Tree in Every City We Map. See every place we map in the United States, or open the map to find what is near you.