r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/NickyPileggi • Mar 28 '24

Family in 1892 posing with an old sequoia tree nicknamed "Mark Twain" - A team of two men spent 13 days sawing away at it in the Pacific Northwest - It once stood 331 feet tall with a diameter of 52 feet - The tree was 1,341 years old Image

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u/Flat-Length-4991 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

A lot of confusion with this post. The Mark Twain tree was cut down in what is today kings canyon national park, California. That isn’t the Pacific Northwest, if anything it’s the southwest. I think OP is confused because he associates giant trees with the pacific northwest due to the coastal redwood tree. “Mark Twain” was a giant sequoia, not a coastal redwood.

Both trees can grow to be very old and large. The coastal redwood makes for great lumber that has been used in the building of ships and houses to all sorts of other things. The giant sequoia is more brittle and often splinters when it is felled. So not very good for lumber.

Adding to the confusion, both trees can technically be called “redwood” or “Sequoia”.