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Two in Tow & On the Go | Tacoma’s Mountaineer Tree is a giant of the forest

Posted on June 13th, 2025 By: Tonya Strickland

In this adventure, we invite you and the kiddos in your life to look up — and take a moment to marvel. No, we’re not celebrating the glorious appearance of the sun in South Sound skies this week (although that’s been truly spectacular, hasn’t it?).

We’re here to say hello to a tree. A very big tree. A rustic conifer, if you will. One that’s been standing tall and mighty since before Washington was a state — or even a territory. Locals know it as the Mountaineer Tree, an approximately 218-foot-tall living legend that’s called Tacoma home since the 1500s. And it lives just over the bridge in Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park.

The Mountaineer Tree is a Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) with a massive trunk that’s more than huggable, spanning nearly 8 feet in diameter. It’s located in the upper, peninsula portion of the park right off the paved Outer Loop of Five Mile Drive, which remains closed to vehicles. That makes this particular route and destination especially family-friendly for being flat, paved, and even stroller and wheelchair accessible.

FUN FACT: The Mountaineer Tree is highlighted in Tacoma’s 2023 Heritage Tree Program database for “trees of exemplary size, age, and/or significance.”You can see all the Heritage Trees on this interactive map.

The tree was named in 1949 for the Tacoma branch of The Mountaineers hiking club, the first group to formally recognize the giant fir with signage highlighting its stats. Further research for this story revealed that The Mountaineers not only thought up the sign, but also carved it by hand and cleared an accessible path to the tree so folks could see it —essentially ‘uncovering’ the giant from the old-growth depths of the Point Defiance upper region, one of the last remaining original forests in Washington.

In fact, the tree is among the relics of a pre-statehood Pacific Northwest once blanketed with towering conifers that are now incredibly rare to find. Uncovered finds like that are part of the thrill of exploring Point Defiance’s extensive walking trails. You never know what you’ll stumble on next — a bald eagle sighting, a madrona grove, or a giant fir stretching toward the clouds.

Our experience in 2024

When the kids and I visited the Mountaineer Tree last August, Clara and Wyatt sure loved Point Defiance Park and its massive firs, hemlocks, and red cedars that share the land with huckleberry, salal, and sword ferns (2024 Gig Harbor Nature Bingo vocab for the win!).

At the Mountaineer Tree, located off the the kids counting their steps around and around (and around) the tree’s giant base and craning their necks to see who could get a good look at its tippiest-toppiest branches.

FUN FACT: Tacoma’s Heritage Tree Program says the Mountaineer Tree is so immense, that even those upper branches we saw are larger than the entire structure of other trees at the park more than 20 years old.

While we didn’t notice that fun fact in person, we did see that in our selfies, a massive backdrop of bark impressively filled the entire screen.

In all the ways to judge its size, the Mountaineer Tree’s age alone is enough to give anyone pause. It’s a fact further driven home by Parks Tacoma, the public rec agency that runs Point Defiance, whose employees love to share on Facebook that the tree is as old as William Shakespeare who was born in 1564.

Source: Parks Tacoma Facebook

That’s why we took our history pal Greg Spadoni on our visit. We thought we could “wow” him with a fancy tall tree and its cool history. But he took one glance at its height and said … he’s seen bigger. In fact, he told us that the dudes he worked for at Spadoni Bros. took down an even taller tree about 36 years ago when it was dangerously leaning over a roadway on the Key Peninsula. If Greg used hashtags, he would’ve thrown a #beentheredonethat our way. But he didn’t. Instead, he was a good sport about it. I mean, in the end, a cool tree is still a cool tree, amiright? And even someone who’s spent “25 years in road construction working … in every corner of the Gig Harbor and Key Peninsulas,” could see it.

Except … I now pose a question: Was this massive 1989 Tallest Tree Ever as impressive as the Mountaineer Tree in 2024? We think not, Mr. Spadoni. Because the hiking club’s tree is still standing today.

1949

Back to 1949, when the Tacoma Mountaineers placed their sign beside the tree, they weren’t just celebrating the remarkable 400-plus- years-old Douglas fir in Point Defiance Park. They were sharing a piece of the wild that matched their own spirit of adventure, conservation, and respect for the natural world.

The Mountaineer Tree project was celebrated as a standout achievement in the group’s Dec. 15, 1949 newsletter, shared with both the Tacoma and Seattle chapters. In an article highlighting Tacoma’s notable activities, the passage explained that the tree was “heretofore not visible to the public” until it caught the attention of club member Carl Heaton. As part of his conservation efforts—supported by a newly formed committee—the group cleared a path to the tree, unveiling its grandeur to the public. The entry also named club member “Mrs. Fred Corbit” who artifully carved the wooden sign by hand after she joined a woodcarving class to learn how to do it.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Mountaineer newsletter, Dec. 15, 1949. Source: mountaineers.org

And the above excerpt transcribed:

“On the Five Mile Drive of Point Defiance Park there stands a Douglas Fir Tree is about 400 years old, 24 feet in circumference and 220 feet tall! heretofore not visible to the public. Due to the efforts of Carl Heaton it now draws hundreds of visitors and bears a handsomely hand carved plaque done by our own Ruth Corbit. Carl Heaton is a member of Tacoma’s newest committee, born this year, devoted to conservation, and ably chairmaned by Leo Gallagher.”

FUN FACT: the Mountaineer Tree isn’t even the tallest in the park. According to a 2019 Parks Tacoma Facebook post, a local arborist discovered another Douglas fir that edges out the Mountaineer Tree. It’s hidden just steps off an unmarked trail, with no sign or fanfare. Can you find it?

1955

In a June 12, 1955 article of the Tacoma News Tribune, Carl Heaton made headlines again when his idea to open the “Big Tree Trail” at Point Defiance Park was officially dedicated. The Mountaineer Tree is also mentioned. Heaton’s walk led “through a grove of 40 massive trees, each over 22 feet in circumference and at least 7 feet in diameter. Eagle Scouts from Troop 27, led by John Simac and Heaton, helped blaze the trail and planted hundreds of new Douglas firs. The well-known Mountaineer Tree is one of the highlighted stops along the route. No trees were cut during the trail’s creation, which offers a scenic 20-minute loop including a bridge over a gulch.”

1989 and today

The 1940s sign remained up until 1989, when another group installed a replacement for Arbor Day. The day’s festivities also included nature walks and the planting of a baby Douglas Fir in the park. it shows the tree’s age in tree rings, and what was happening in pop culture history of each corresponding era.

Getting there

The Mountaineer Tree remains one of the most accessible giants in the park. Nestled right on the edge of the park’s paved and car-free Five Mile Drive, which has since closed to vehicles due to cliff erosion, the scenic loop is still walkable, making the tree an easy stop for families and nature lovers alike.

So whether you’re walking the Big Tree Trail from the 1950s or one of the many others, check out this trail map to plot your best route to the Mountaineer Tree, labeled in the northeastern tip of Point Defiance Park between the Dalco Passage Viewpoint and Vashon Viewpoint. I’m still not sure how we got there exactly — and I relied more on my iPhone’s GPS more than the average person – but we got street parking just after the turnout for Owen Beach and headed out from there. Afterward reaching the tree, we walked back to our car from on the Outer Loop route.

See ya out there!

Mom and two kids standing with water and boats in the background.

Tonya Strickland is a Gig Harbor mom-of-two and longtime journalist. Now in the travel and family niche, her blog, Two in Tow & On the Go, was named among the 10 Seattle-Area Instagram Accounts to Follow by ParentMap magazine. Tonya and her husband Bowen moved to Gig Harbor from California with their two kids, Clara (11) and Wyatt (9) in 2021. Find them on Facebook for all the kid-friendly places in and around town.