Sequoia National Park United States

Legendary

View the giant sequoia trees including the General Sherman tree, the largest on earth.

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The General Sherman Tree is not the tallest tree in the world. It isn't the widest, and it isn't the oldest either.

It's the biggest. Measured by the amount of wood in its trunk, no living thing on Earth is larger.

The tree stands about 275 feet tall, and its trunk is more than 100 feet around at the base. It holds over 52,000 cubic feet of wood, enough to build more than 120 houses.

It's still growing. Every year it adds enough new wood to make a 60-foot pine tree.

The General Sherman grows in the Giant Forest, a grove high in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Five of the ten largest trees in the world stand there, including the President Tree, which is more than 3,200 years old.

Giant sequoias grow naturally in only one place: a narrow strip along the western side of the Sierra Nevada. Their thick, spongy bark protects them from fire and insects, which is part of why they live so long.

In the 1800s, loggers came for them. The wood turned out to be brittle and shattered when the trees fell, but the cutting continued.

Conservationists fought back. On September 25, 1890, Congress created Sequoia National Park, the second national park in the country and the first created to protect a living thing.

The park's eastern edge climbs to the top of Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the lower 48 states at 14,505 feet. From the giant trees at 6,000 feet to the bare granite summit, the park covers more than 400,000 acres.

For a long time, people thought a different tree was the biggest. The General Grant Tree in a nearby grove held the title until 1931, when careful measurements showed the General Sherman was larger.

A Civil War veteran named James Wolverton gave the tree its name in 1879. He had served under General William Tecumseh Sherman.

Walk the half-mile paved trail down to the General Sherman, then stand at its base and look up. Follow the two-mile Congress Trail loop to see the President Tree and the clusters called the House and Senate. Climb the 350 steps up Moro Rock for a view across the canyons to the peaks of the Great Western Divide.