Nooksack Giant

The Nooksack Giant was a superlative Coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) that grew at Loop's Ranch (now Alpenglow Farm) in Maple Falls in Washington State. It was felled in the 1890s. The tree was measured with a tape after felling at 465 feet tall, and 34 feet in circumference, making the Nooksack Giant easily the tallest tree ever recorded on the planet. Although anecdotal reports exist of other Douglas firs and mountain ash trees reaching 500 feet, they are often dismissed as unreliable. It produced more than 96,000 board feet of lumber. The New York Times regarded the tree in a March7, 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 February28, 1897 claimed that the wood, sawed into one-inch strips, would reach from "Whatcom [the tree's location] to China".