In 1930, the Mineral Tree falls in Lewis County. One of Washington's tallest Douglas fir trees ever recorded, its name comes from the nearby community of Mineral. The evergreen is found to be 1,020 years old, one of the oldest Douglas fir trees recorded in the state. It measures 393 feet tall and has a diameter of 15.4 feet, and while a few Douglas firs in the state may have been slightly taller, the Mineral Tree is the tallest such tree considered to be officially documented in Washington state history.
The Douglas Fir
In some ways the Douglas fir tree goes hand-in-hand with Washington's history, though its origins as a needle-leaf conifer predate the dinosaurs. The "fir" moniker is misleading, as the tree is not a true fir but is instead its own unique genus. Its name comes from David Douglas (1799-1834), a Scottish botanist who traveled the Pacific Northwest in the mid-1820s while on assignment from the Royal Horticultural Society of London to identify unknown plants and trees. Though earlier explorers had seen the tree, it was Douglas who introduced it to mainstream society.
A mature Douglas fir can be identified by its branch-free lower trunk. On an especially tall fir, the branches may not begin until 200 feet above the forest floor, and it is the wood from this lower part of the tree that is especially prized among loggers and woodworkers. The tree grows best in quiet valleys and near a water source at the bottom of ravines (where it's sheltered to an extent from strong winds, which can uproot some of the more shallow-rooted trees), and in ideal conditions can live more than 1,000 years.
When early non-Native settlers arrived in Washington in the mid-nineteenth century, Douglas firs were abundant in areas near the coast as well as along the western flanks of the Cascade foothills. The newcomers soon discovered that the trees had top-quality wood, which could be easily cut and which could be used and re-used. And they marveled at the height of the trees; only the coast redwood tree and a species of eucalyptus tree grow a little taller.
The Mineral Tree
One massive fir tree that caught the eye of early Washingtonians was the Mineral Tree, located near the community of Mineral in Lewis County. The top of the tree had blown off when it was first discovered, and in 1905 the segment was measured at 168 feet by Joe Westover, a land engineer from the Northern Pacific Railway. U.S. Forest Service Chief Richard McArdle subsequently measured the standing tree at 225 feet with a steel tape and Abney level, which is the basis for the tree's total height of 393 feet. After the rest of the tree was blown down in the winter of 1930, both sections were measured again at least twice, once by forestry students from the University of Washington. In addition to its towering height, the tree measured 15.4 feet in diameter at a height of 6 feet, and a ring count showed it to be 1,020 years old. A section of this tree still exists, and it can be seen at the Wind River Arboretum in Skamania County.
Because of the multiple and credible measurements, the Mineral Tree is officially recognized as the tallest Douglas fir tree recorded in Washington, and it's also said to be one of the most massive Douglas firs chronicled in the state. However, the tree's recognition as Washington's tallest is conditional. Accounts from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century are replete with tales of Douglas fir trees reaching 400 feet, and while some of these reports are likely exaggerated, others may not have been.
Topmost Challengers
One well-known report comes from an 1891 account in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of a journey through Whatcom County between Sumas and Deming by two men, John M. Saas and S. H. Soule. They were tasked by Edmond Meany (1862-1935), press agent of the Washington World's Fair Association for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair Commission (and later a renowned history professor at the University of Washington), to scout out the largest fir tree they could find to display at the Washington State Building at the fair. During their three-day adventure, the men measured trees 14 feet in diameter and spied trees that "good judges" ("Some Big Trees") estimated were 400 feet high. "It is the ideal forest, the forest primeval, for the lumberman's axe has marred neither bark nor shrub. On one acre it was estimated the fir timber would produce a half-million feet of lumber and half as much more of cedar," described the Post-Intelligencer shortly after the men returned ("Some Big Trees").
The most serious challenger of the state's official tallest-fir record is the Nooksack Giant. This was a Douglas fir felled in early 1896 by Alfred Loop on his farm near present-day Maple Falls in Whatcom County, cut into massive sections and taken to nearby railcars, and hauled to New Whatcom (now Bellingham). For at least a few months, possibly as much as a year, a section of the Nooksack Giant was displayed on the corner of Holly Street and Railroad Avenue. A sign on the stump said the tree was 465 feet tall, 220 feet to the first limb, 33 feet 11 inches in circumference, and an estimated 480 years old. The sign further reported that the tree would yield 96,345 board feet of lumber.
There is considerable skepticism of the 465-foot height claim, not only because of limited verification but also because this has been determined to be near the theoretical limit of the maximum height for a Douglas fir. A 415-foot behemoth was cut in Lynn Valley (in present-day North Vancouver, British Columbia) in 1902, and there is some debate even of the height of this tree. Nevertheless, the estimated lumber yield of more than 96,000 board feet from the Nooksack Giant was impressive – most 350-foot Douglas firs yield 60,000 board feet. Because of this extraordinary yield, many big-tree researchers find it plausible that the Nooksack Giant reached at least 400 feet in height.
Few of these giants remain in the twenty-first century. In 2025, the tallest known Douglas fir isn't even found in Washington but instead is found in southwestern Oregon. Known as the Doerner Fir, the tree measures 327 feet tall and is 11.5 feet in diameter. Washington does retain the record for the most massive Douglas fir currently known, with the Queets Fir (located in Olympic National Park) measuring at least 15 feet in diameter, with some accounts placing it closer to 16 feet.
