A giant among giants and a beacon for countless tourists driving through the Columbia River Gorge is dead.
The accurately-named Big Tree, a massive ponderosa pine near Trout Lake in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, was hundreds of years old.
A mammoth conifer, the Big Tree contained about 22,000 board feet of lumber — enough wood to frame almost one and a half 2,400-square-foot homes.
Although it was one of the oldest and tallest trees of its kind, and for decades the centerpiece of an interpretive site for travelers headed to Mount Adams, the Big Tree died with little fanfare last year. Jon Nakae, a silviculturist in the Mount Adams Ranger District, wrote it an obituary, but stopped short of publishing it for fear of making light of a particularly sensitive section of local newspapers.
To read more, visit the Columbian.
