Thirty Years Later, Van Pelt Returns to Remeasure the Champion
Thirty years ago, Van Pelt and Arthur Lee Jacobson roamed Washington state, searching for champion trees using a method they called “55 MPH Dendrology”. Working at top speed, it took a decade to compile “Champion Trees of Washington State”.
They had a lot of ground to cover but they applied the brakes when they came to Walla Walla, where more than 60 trees made it into the final edition.
Among the champions they discovered in Walla Walla was a London Plane, growing on the grounds of an abandoned house by Yellowhawk Creek.
The tree had been planted near the beginning of the 20th century. It was already a memorable tree in the 1960s, when a student named Michael Murr was attending high school. By the time Van Pelt found it in the 1980s it was big enough to be included in his collection of the largest trees in the state.
Michael Murr went off to Harvard, and became a success. He returns home to Walla Walla from time to time and on one of those visits he resolved to build a park to preserve the tree he knew from his youth.
thirty years of growth
Still images from LIDAR 3-d scan
Robert Van Pelt
Robert Van Pelt, PhD, is a research Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington. An artist and global authority on champion trees, he specializes in quantitative ecology and is a researcher with Save the Redwood League’s Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative. Van Pelt started the Washington Big Tree Program in 1986, and is the state coordinator for the National Big Tree Program. He is the author of Forest Giants of the Pacific Coast (2001) as well as numerous scholarly articles.
elliott almond
Elliott Almond has been an investigative journalist for three decades, having worked at the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, and San Jose Mercury News. He has been recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors, Best American Sports Writing, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times. He came to Walla Walla on this occasion while working on a feature profile of Van Pelt.
Selected publications by Robert Van Pelt
Revisiting California’s Big Trees: A Selective History;
Fremontia, Vol. 47, No. 1, May 2019; Pages 4 – 13
Emergent crowns and light-use complementarity lead to global maximum biomass and leaf area in Sequoia sempervirens forests.
Forest Ecology and Management
Volume 375, 1 September 2016, Pages 279-308
Identifying Old Trees and Forests in Eastern Washington.
Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Olympia, WA. 2008, 166 p.
Tree People of Walla Walla 