For well over 450 years, the Wye Oak stood as a quiet giant along what was once a Native American Trail and later Route 662, surviving the birth of a nation, the Civil War, and two World Wars as generations of visitors and admirers came to see it. In 1909, Maryland's first state forester, Fred W Besley, took the first official measurements of the tree, which quickly gained notoriety as the largest and finest specimen of white oak in the country. In 1939, Wye Oak State Park marked the first time a government purchased a single tree for preservation. In 1940, during a nationwide contest by the American Forestry Association to locate the largest living specimens of American trees, the Wye Oak became the first tree named a national champion. It was one of only two trees to have held that title since the contests began until it fell in a storm in June of 2002. The tree measured nearly 32 feet in circumference and 96 feet tall, with a crown spreading over 119 feet and covering nearly 1/3 of an acre, and its main trunk weighed over 61,000 pounds. New life has been brought to the site through a clone of the tree transplanted there for a new generation of admirers.

Photo: E. H. Pickering, Library of Congress, HABS

Photo: E.H. Pickering (Historic American Buildings Survey)

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Photo: Allen C. Browne

Queenstown, Maryland · USA