The General Sherman Tree measures 103/31-metres around, and soars 275 feet/84 metres into the blue Sierra sky—and it's still growing. Every year it adds enough wood to make another 60-foot/18-metre-tall tree.
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Here's how the General Sherman got its name(s). The largest tree in the world has lived through millennia, has been named for a Civil War general and has shaded a socialist commune that briefly called it Marx. Now the centerpiece of Sequoia National Park is endangered by the California wildfires burning nearby.
Two other historical and exceedingly enormous giant sequoias, the Discovery Tree with a near-30m circumference, and especially the long-fallen Father of the Forest from Calaveras Grove, reportedly a whopping 435ft high and 110ft in circumference, are widely considered to have once been larger than General Sherman.
Visiting the General Sherman TreeTwo trails lead to the Sherman Tree. Parking for the Main Trail is off the Wolverton Road (between the Sherman Tree and Lodgepole); just follow signs. The trail runs half a mile (0.8 km) down to the tree. It has a few stairs and is paved.
The Giant Forest alone is home to 8,000 giant sequoia trees, including the General Sherman tree. The tree, which is roughly 2,200 years old, sits behind a fence and a giant sign displaying its name. While you cannot get close enough to touch it, it remains both a beautiful sight and a great photo opportunity.
The National Park Service estimates that the General would yield 630,000 board feet of lumber. That's enough, they say, “to build 120 average-sized houses. In fact, a single giant sequoia may contain more wood than is found on several acres of some of the finest virgin timberland in the Pacific Northwest.
Whitebark pine, Western juniper and Douglas-fir can live more than 1,000 years while giant sequoias can live more than 3,000 years. Giant sequoias are the third longest-lived tree species with the oldest known specimen to have been 3,266 years old in the Converse Basin Grove of Giant Sequoia National Monument.