More than 2,000 years ago, a seed the size of an oatmeal flake began to sprout in the mountains now known as the Sierra Nevada. The seedling grew through a forest canopy and eventually reached 275 feet, the height of a 27-story building, with a trunk wider than a three-lane highway. Today, the giant sequoia called the General Sherman reigns as the world’s largest tree.
HOW LARGE?
Though not the tallest or widest tree, the General ranks as largest based on the volume of its trunk—52,508 cubic feet, enough wood to make a two-foot-wide path of inch-thick planks 60 miles long.
AN OFFICER’S RESPECTS
In 1879, naturalist and Civil War veteran James Wolverton named the tree after his former commander, William Tecumseh ("War is hell") Sherman.
