Old, Strong, and Tall: Here’s Where the Largest Tree in New Hampshire Lives

There are beautiful, tall trees everywhere in the Granite State, on private grounds, and in public forests, including some of the oldest trees in the country.

The tallest tree in New Hampshire is a white pine on private property in Claremont, measuring 166.1 feet, according to the New England Historical Society.  This extraordinarily tall and skinny white pine tree has been measured and recorded by NativeTreeSociety.org, which measure the tallest and most historical trees across the globe.

NewEnglandForestry.org says the Eastern White Pine is "one of the quintessential trees of  New England."   New England Forestry goes on to say,

White pine can easily reach 200 years in age, and at least one specimen has been recorded as 450 years old. Individual trees grow to heights of 100-150 feet—which makes the Eastern White Pine the tallest tree species in New England—and reach a diameter of up to 40 inches.

Those are some really tall trees.

When we talk about age, there are trees in Wilton, New Hampshire's Sheldrick Forest, left untouched for hundreds of years. This forest is largely as is for over 200 years because some areas are so hard to reach, says onlyinyourstate.com.

The largest measured girth of a tree in New Hampshire is nearly 20 feet around, according to monumentaltrees.com.  This tree is a sugar maple, not a white pine (known for height not girth).  The largest sugar maple was on a farm in Ossipee, but fell in 1846. It yielded 3300 board feet of lumber and nine cords of firewood.

Many of the largest trees in New England were elm trees, but when the Dutch Elm Disease struck in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, many of these mammoth trees were cut down.  One such elm was located in Hampton, New Hampshire, and turned out to be 176 years old, according to the Native Tree Society.