1,900 t4,190,000 lb
The General Sherman tree weighs an estimated 1,900 tonnes (about 4.2 million lb) for the whole tree, fresh and full of water. That figure is a 1938 estimate. The National Park Service puts the trunk alone at about 1,270 tonnes (2.8 million lb), and the dry wood and bark above ground at about 582 t.
| Whole tree, 1938 estimate4,299,851 lb, fresh wood | 1,950 t4,300,000 lb |
|---|---|
| Trunk, branches and bark, freshOur estimate: 1,591 m³ (2013) at the Park Service’s wood density | 1,350 t2,980,000 lb |
| Everything above ground, dry2013 measurement, water removed | 582 t1,280,000 lb |
Nobody can weigh a standing tree, so every figure is a volume multiplied by how heavy the wood is. In 1938, Walter Fry and John R. White estimated the whole tree at 4,299,851 lb, about 1,950 tonnes, using a weighed section of another living sequoia as their guide. Their trunk alone came to 2,471,994 lb (1,121 t). Rounded down, that whole-tree figure is the 1,900 t we use.
Earlier numbers were far bigger. A 1912 park circular gave the tree’s weight as 12,335,639 lb, or 6,167 tons, split into trunk, roots, limbs, bark and foliage. That figure stayed in the Encyclopaedia Britannica for decades, long after the 1938 estimate cut it to about a third.
The National Park Service measures the trunk at 52,500 cubic feet (1,487 m³) and says it alone weighs nearly 1,400 tons, about 1,270 tonnes or 2.8 million lb. That works out to roughly 850 kg per cubic metre, because living sequoia wood is soaked with water.
A 2013 measurement reported by Guinness World Records found 1,591 m³ of wood and bark in the whole tree, 1,389 m³ of it in the main trunk. Dried out, everything above ground would weigh about 582 tonnes, including 48 t of bark and 1.68 t of leaves, possibly as many as 2 billion of them. At the Park Service’s density, that 1,591 m³ would weigh about 1,350 t fresh, so going by these figures more than half of the living tree’s weight is water.
None of the modern figures count the roots. The 1938 estimate is higher than any of them, and the sources we found don’t say whether it used heavier wood or counted more of the tree, so 1,900 t is best read as the top of the range.
In January 2006, General Sherman’s largest branch broke off with nobody watching. It was more than 2 m (6.6 ft) across and over 30 m (98 ft) long, bigger than most tree trunks, and it smashed part of the fence and cratered the walkway below. Treating it as a log tapering from 2 m to about half a metre, our rough estimate is around 35 tonnes of fresh wood.
That is a few percent of the tree at most, and losing big limbs is normal for old sequoias. In 2021, when the KNP Complex Fire came close, firefighters wrapped the base of the trunk in protective foil, and the tree came through unharmed.
General Sherman has been the largest tree by volume since a 1931 survey compared it with the General Grant tree. It isn’t the tallest tree (a coast redwood called Hyperion is), and at about 2,150 years old by a 2002 estimate, it isn’t the oldest either.
It isn’t the heaviest organism either. Pando, a single quaking aspen in Utah, has about 47,000 genetically identical stems joined by one root system over 106 acres, and weighs more than 6,600 tons (about 6,000 tonnes), roughly three times as much as General Sherman.
The whole tree is estimated at about 4.2 to 4.3 million lb when fresh. The trunk alone weighs about 2.8 million lb, according to the National Park Service.
It is 274.9 ft (83.8 m) tall, with a base 36.5 ft (11.1 m) across and a circumference at the ground of 102.6 ft (31.3 m). The first large branch starts 130 ft (39.6 m) up.
About 2,150 years as of 2000, according to a 2002 estimate by USGS ecologist Nathan Stephenson based on tree cores. Older claims ranged from 2,300 to 2,700 years, and early ones went as high as 6,000.
It is the largest single-stem tree by volume. Pando, a clonal aspen colony in Utah, is heavier at about 6,000 tonnes, but it is spread across tens of thousands of stems.
Yes. The Park Service says an average mature giant sequoia adds enough wood each year to make a 60 ft (18 m) tall oak tree 3 ft across, so old giants like General Sherman keep getting heavier.
Last checked October 3, 2026.
