Nooksack Giant
The height of 465 feet would make the Nooksack Giant easily the tallest tree ever reliably recorded on the planet. Although anecdotal reports do exist of other Douglas fir and mountain ash trees reaching 400 to 500 feet (122 to 152 m), such as the 435 ft (133 m) "Ferguson Tree" a Eucalyptus Regnans of the Watt's river, Australia in 1872, or the 415 ft (126 m) Lynn Valley Tree, a Douglas fir felled in 1902 - They are often dismissed as unreliable, while others are considered plausible and even well documented such as the historic "Mineral Tree" a 393 ft (120 m) Douglas fir.
The placard recorded that the Nooksack tree produced 96,345 board feet of the "finest quality" lumber. The New York Times regarded the tree in a March 7, 1897 issue as the "most magnificent fir tree ever beheld by human eyes" and called its destruction a "truly pitiable tale" and a "crime". The Morning Times of February 28, 1897 claimed that the wood, sawed into one-inch strips, would reach from "Whatcom [the tree's location] to China".
It is of some interest that an earlier timber cruise along the Nooksack river in 1891, 15 miles west of Loop's Ranch, by two Sumas lumbermen and surveyors, John M. Saar, and S. H. Soule, reported standing Douglas-fir trees measuring from 9 to 14 feet in diameter, estimated at 350 to 400 feet in height. One grove in particular located within an eighth of a mile of the railroad tracks, along the Nooksack river, south of present Everson was noted, "in all reasonable probability, the finest group of fir trees west of the Cascade Mountains. The diameter of any individual member does not exceed nine feet, but the extreme height, estimated by good judges to be from 350 to 400 feet, the symmetry and perfection in every way is the admiration of those who have viewed them"..."On one acre it was estimated the fir timber would produce a half-million feet of lumber and half as much more of cedar. A single tree near the group rises perfectly straight from the ground, close barked and without a blemish, full two hundred feet or more to the first limb. Its diameter is nine feet, and its height possibly four hundred feet."
See also
References
- ^ "A Big "Big Tree". Mining and Scientific Press. 72: 185. March 7, 1896.
- ^ "A Great Redwood Slab". The pioneer express. [volume] (Pembina, Dakota [N.D.]). December 25, 1896.
- ^ "Geography and History Notes: Mt. Baker and the North Fork Nooksack River Area". Mt-Baker.com. W.L. Devine.
- ^ "Tallest tree ever measured | Guinness World Records". Retrieved October 7, 2024.
- ^ "Giant logged long ago but not forgotten", The Seattle Times, September 4, 2011
- ^ "Topics of The Times" (PDF). The New York Times. March 7, 1897.
- ^ "This tree might reach to China". Washington, D.C.: The Morning Times. February 28, 1897. p. 19 – via Library of Congress.
- ^ "Fir Trees Measured". Aberdeen herald.(Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.). August 6, 1891.
- ^ "SOME BIG TREES". The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]). July 19, 1891.