We’re driving down the road in Yankee Lake, Ohio, in Marc DeWerth’s blue Honda Odyssey, when suddenly he spots a prize: a sprawling white oak tree in the middle of a field, just beyond a roadside advertisement for an upcoming gun show. The tree’s mighty crown draws us in.
On approach, we see that the tree is hollowed out at its base, enough so that an adult could fit comfortably inside. After a century or two of growth, some pain is to be expected, some evidence of survival at great cost. DeWerth observes the tree, admiring its gangly grandeur, and then takes the measurements. This is an important part of the task at hand, and it’s easy enough once you understand what you’re measuring. “Even people writing newspaper articles can do this,” he says.
DeWerth wraps a tape measure around the trunk, gathering its circumference: 16’6”. Then we work together to capture its crown by measuring edge to edge at the branches’ widest point and narrowest point (add those numbers together and divide by two to get an average spread metric). This one is no sapling, but it certainly doesn’t rank among the giants he’s known for finding. Still, it’s quite an experience to stand next to a sprawling old oak tree.
“An old fellow like this can live a long time,” he says. “This tree is probably every bit of 175 to 200 years old. Easily. The strength of the tree is the cambium layer. That’s your outer layer of the tree. That’s where all your strength is. If it still had that side, it would be over 200 inches. So it’s pretty close to being as mega as mega can get.”
Mega trees are 200 inches or more in diameter. Mammoth trees start at 240 inches. Gigantis trees are 300 inches or more.
We were out in Trumbull County on a lark. Years ago, DeWerth had received a tip about a massive ginkgo tree on an old farm property. The farm itself had changed hands, but, presumably, the tree remained, and DeWerth wanted to get a look at it. This is what he does: He scouts the biggest trees in Ohio. Every rumor of a massive oak or sycamore carries the promise of discovery. Like a Captain Ahab of hardwood forests, he’s attuned to the grizzled giants of the world.
That ginkgo didn’t pan out. We saw it from the road, abutting an old farmhouse, but, let’s be real here, it wasn’t anything special. A fine tree, but we were on a mission to find truly exceptional trees. We wanted to find a gigantis.
“Basically, tree seeking is pretty much you just going out with hope,” DeWerth says before logging the ginkgo on his Google Maps display of hundreds of pins, each one a unique tree, and then peeling off. That’s the thing: There are always more trees to find, like the oak in Yankee Lake.
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With the rise of social media and broad post-pandemic, mid-climate catastrophe interest in citizen naturalist hobbies (think birding, hiking, morel hunting), tree seeking is having something of a moment. Maybe you’venoticed. Maybe, like mine, your unique Facebook algorithm is pumping photos of big trees from groups like Big Tree Seekers, Big Tree Seekers Club, or DeWerth’s own Big Trees Ohio into your feed. Maybe not. (Although, after reading this story, watch out.)
Big Trees Ohio currently clocks some 55,000 followers. The newer Instagram counterpart, @big_trees_ohio, boasts 15,800. The accounts share DeWerth’s travels and discoveries; he’s rounded out by a crew of fellow tree seekers and Gen Z university students. The trees themselves are a mix of chance finds and hot leads sent in from around the state. DeWerth’s social media followers are not passive; rather, the Facebook page is an active community of tree-obsessed folks from all four corners of Ohio.
On those pages, DeWerth posts with the impassioned and deeply invested lexicon of a journalist covering the NFL draft. A recent visit to an eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) in Mahoning County prompted an update: “A HOG for sure at a newly updated 282″ in circumference and over 102′ tall. What a TRUCK!!”
Same for a trip out to Marion County in February: “A HONKER of a Ginkgo biloba in a local cemetery in the Prospect area of Marion County… Big, wide, with plenty of nutrients. What a TANK at 203″ in circumference and 66′ tall, with a wide spread.”
The pages started innocently enough. DeWerth was already spending a lot of time outdoors—hiking, doing volunteer naturalist work, helping with invasive species removal, bird counts, and Bigfoot investigations—and he kept running into big trees in the woods. When he posted photos of those trees on his Bigfoot page, people reacted strongly and asked where the trees were. “Anytime I’d do a post with a tree, they’d go bananas,” he recalls.
He followed the attention of his audience and started an account devoted to big trees in Ohio. The first thousand followers showed up immediately; the account has grown steadily ever since, earning the jealousy even of his daughter’s friends. How does your dad have so many followers?
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Big trees are one thing, but the biggest specimens are known as champion trees, tracked by universities and government agencies at the individual state level–and by the University of Tennessee at the national level.
Peruse Ohio’s list of champion trees, native and non-native alike, and you’ll see DeWerth’s claims to fame. He has even found at least four national champion trees in Ohio (green ash, chinquapin oak, pin oak, and northern red oak), national champs being of course the largest of a given species across the U.S. This spring, he has plans to re-measure a few white oak trees he’s found in Ohio to make a claim at that national champion title; the former crown belonged to a white oak in Virginia that fell just last year. It was DeWerth himself who happened to be in Virginia and realized that the champion had fallen; he alerted the authorities. Scouring the state’s list of champion trees, it’s easy to sense the competition out there.
“I’m not as hungry as I used to be looking for the champions,” he says. “I like to just document all big trees.”
Ohio has been keeping track of its biggest trees for a surprisingly long time. The state’s Champion Tree Program, run by the Ohio Division of Forestry, dates back to the 1950s and was originally modeled after a national effort once run by the conservation group American Forests. The basic idea is simple: for every species of tree in Ohio, all 200+ native and non-native, the state keeps a record of the largest known example.
The title of “state champion” goes to the biggest of the big. When someone thinks they’ve found a contender, they submit a nomination to the program. That tip can come from anyone: a hiker, a landowner, a cemetery caretaker, or one of the state’s small but enthusiastic network of tree seekers, like DeWerth. Once a nomination comes in, a forester goes out to verify the species and take official measurements. Those measurements combine the tree’s trunk circumference, its height, and the spread of its crown to produce a final score. If the numbers beat the current record holder for that species, a new champion is crowned.
The state currently tracks more than 1,000 notable trees in its database. Some are massive centuries-old oaks or sycamores towering over 100 feet tall with trunks wider than a small car. Others are champions simply because their species doesn’t grow very large, trees like dogwoods or redbuds that might top out at 30 feet but can still claim a title if they’re the biggest of their kind.
“These trees are like living testaments of stewardship,” says Alistair Reynolds, forester with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry. He runs the state champion program. “These trees have been cared for or at least allowed to grow for such a long time, and they’ve reached the size and potential that they’ve reached, which is huge.”
Most champion trees are discovered almost by accident. Someone notices a tree that looks unusually big, submits a nomination, and suddenly Ohio’s tree record book gets an update. When the tree sits on public land, the Division of Forestry even adds it to an online map so curious visitors can track it down themselves.
Now, this whole thing is not without controversy. Like any other niche community, tree seeking can at times engender a hyper-competitive streak among its adherents. Even at the state level, ODNR has tocontend with rival claims to national champion trees. “Other states will even contest our measurements and contest our tree identification,” Reynolds says. “There’s even something like tree poaching, where someone finds a tree in a cemetery and nominates it themselves instead of letting the cemetery nominate it.”
That said, the vocation is broadly friendly. We’re talking about trees, after all. If a little competition is good for any sport, then tree seeking pairs that spirit with something more ineffable. There’s no box score here; when scouting big trees, everyone wins.
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Back on the road, we alternate between striking out and finding gold. Zig-zagging westward from the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, DeWerth eventually spots what seems like a beautiful American elm specimen, in fact a pair of elms, behind a low-slung house squatting in the woods. We pull up to the sound of barking dogs and clucking chickens out back, but no one’s home. DeWerth leaves a door hanger explaining a bit about himself and what he’s looking for: “We noticed a massive Big Tree on your property, and would love to come back and measure it.” He’s got a box of these door hangers at the ready in his van. You never know when you’ll find something out there.
This is another element of tree-seeking. Most of these big trees are on private property; you can’t just tromp into someone’s backyard because you saw what looked like a gigantis sycamore from your van. DeWerth, a former salesman, knows from trees, yes, but above all he knows humans. He eagerly knocks on doors and approaches wary homeowners with a litany of facts about their big trees. He’s more than once been greeted by a shotgun; this is Ohio, after all. Armed with the rizz of his former career, he cold-calls strangers for access to their trees.
Point is, you won’t get far as a tree-seeker without knowing how to talk to people.
Often, too, he’s learned that many people haven’t even paid attention to the trees around them to begin with. “There’s people that say, ‘I’ve known that tree forever. I remember driving by that tree for 50 years.’ You ever stop? ‘Nope.’” It takes someone like DeWerth to shock them into actually looking at the world around them, not simply seeing it whiz by or eyeing a woody beast as a nuisance to be felled.
This is nothing new. The American relationship with trees has never been exactly tender. Traveling through the U.S. in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed what he called a “general feeling of hatred against trees,” writing that Americans saw “the absence of woods” as “the sign of civilization.”
Forests, in that view, were not sublime. They were in the way. The field of wheat was the ideal; the dark wall of timber was a problem to be solved. Maybe this sounds familiar, if you replace wheat fields with culs-de-sac and shopping center plazas sporting acres of asphalted parking spaces.
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Further westward now, as we approach Portage County, a striking northern catalpa catches his eye. An older woman and her grandchildren are in the driveway; before much in the way of salutations, DeWerth is already opining on the biology of the catalpa, holding forth from his driver’s seat and mesmerizing the family with catalpa intel. The woman mentions that one year the tree was filled with worms, and that sends DeWerth into a brief soliloquy on catalpa worms: perfect fish bait and worth a pretty penny if you know how to find your buyer. The family ushers us into the front yard so that we can measure and photograph the catalpa. As many catalpas do, this one leans strongly to port, etching a pleasant and unusual silhouette against the blue March sky.
“Usually what I try to do is re-educate the people on their trees and why it’s important and what’s significant about it,” DeWerth says as we hit the road again. “Gets them excited. And when you get them excited, then they want to do more for it.” There is no doubt that the family, already reverent of the catalpa in the front yard, will look differently at it now. They may talk about the strange man who showed up at their house one day for the rest of their lives. With any luck, that’s what DeWerth is doing out here. He’s taking stock of Ohio’s rich arboreal heritage, but he’s also leaving a distinct imprint on people’s perspective of the world around them, as it exists now, as it existed before, as it might in the future.
In the van, DeWerth is the captain of his ship. He dispenses wisdom on trees, but also global geopolitics, Bigfoot, the Dunkin’ rewards points program, trail running, Gen Z’s penchant for Capri Sun and ramen noodles, select Northeast Ohio fish fry intel, and, maybe the one topic that rivals trees in his purview, cars. He burns through vans, putting some 60,000 miles on them each year. How else is he supposed to find all these trees? As we cruise the turnpike, he offers commentary on the dubious Chrysler Pacificas, the untrustworthy Jeep Grand Cherokees and their questionable bushings. His eyes scan the tree line, though, always.
We meet again the following week, closer to home, for a brief tour of big trees in the westside suburbs of Cuyahoga County. Our photographer pulls up in an old gold Chevy Impala, which DeWerth finds incredible in 2026. First, we visit a terrific white oak (19’4”) overlooking Lake Road in Bay Village, just north of the senior center, and then we drive to look at an absolutely massive northern red oak (23’8”) holding vigil at the back of Evergreen Cemetery in Westlake.
“We have to keep these trees around because they are things that people can learn from,” DeWerth says.
We conclude our day in a residential neighborhood in North Olmsted, where a homeowner has taken great pride in a bur oak (23’2”) that straddles a property line and towers over houses. To think, this mammoth tree watched North Olmsted spring up around it, probably watched old Aaron Olmsted himself purchase the land for $30,000 back in 1805 and set in motion all that happened since. More than 200 years on, the bur oak anchors the visual plane of the neighborhood and casts acorns to the wildlife below. Its crown spreads in lightning bolts against the gray March sky.
What a tank.
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At first glance, finding big trees can feel like a niche hobby, somewhere between birding and metal detecting. A few people with measuring tapes wandering around cemeteries and back roads, chasing rumors of unusually fat trunks. But the deeper you look, the more these trees start to rewire your sight.
A big tree is big, but it’s not only big in the simple sense of the word. You can look at a tree like a time machine, or like time made visible.
A white oak that’s 200 years old has been standing there since before Ohio was fully carved into farms and highways. It watched the forests thin, the towns appear, the railroads come and go. Long before most of our long-gone relatives were here, that tree was already holding its place in the landscape. And if it survives long enough, it may still be there after we’re gone.
That’s part of what makes Ohio’s biggest trees feel almost miraculous. They are remnants of a landscape that was once nearly continuous forest and then, in the span of a few generations, was cut open and remade, only to be torn down and remade again: Ohio went from 98.7 percent forest cover in the early 1800s to 12 percent around 1900; it’s at about 30 percent now. Cuyahoga County is somewhere between 21 and 25 percent, according to various research. About 72 percent of the area is instead covered by lawns or development.
Which makes the fact of old-growth giants somewhat miraculous. They became rare the hard way: by surviving the long state-building project that treated woods as something to clear, tame, and convert.
That’s part of why the surviving honkers feel so emotionally charged. They have made it through the old war on forests and now face its modern sequel, one fought by surveyors, developers, and institutions that often speak the language of progress with the same confidence earlier generations brought to the axe. Which is why the work of people like DeWerth lands as more than quirky hobbyism. To seek out big trees now is, in its own odd way, to take inventory of what Ohio still has left.
Ecologically, the value is enormous. Large trees do things smaller trees simply can’t. Their canopies store vast amounts of carbon, cooling the surrounding landscape and buffering against climate extremes. Their bark holds entire micro-ecosystems of insects, lichens, mosses, and fungi. Their branches house birds and owls. Their acorns and seeds feed everything from squirrels to deer to turkeys. In forests across the eastern U.S., species like white oak are ecological engines, producing the mast that keeps wildlife populations alive year after year.
But the importance of big trees goes beyond ecology. They are anchors of memory. DeWerth says he has a photographic memory, and that may be true. As we drifted across northern Ohio in the steady drizzle of March rain, he came upon tree after tree that he already knew. He pointed them out like old friends at a cocktail party: twin white oaks in Garrettsville, a girthy bur oak in the front yard of a couple he’d met years back.
And then there’s the simplest reason of all: awe. Most of the modern landscape is built for speed and efficiency. Highways, subdivisions, parking lots, strip malls. Big trees operate on the opposite timeline. They are slow, stubborn, patient. Standing next to one forces you to think differently about time, that old rewiring trick of nature. A trunk that takes three or four people to wrap their arms around makes your daily anxieties feel a little less permanent.
That’s part of what the big tree seekers understand. That’s what DeWerth is trying to tell us.
Then again, there’s the basic thrill of the hunt, the instinct to prowl the frontier and find something truly special out there in this strange, decaying world of ours. A day spent seeking big trees in rural Ohio: This is a meaningful way to spend time in an otherwise fast-paced and mostly deranged society intent on exchanging expediency for the safety of natural wonders..
“There’s always a bigger one,” he says, determined now, staring at the horizon through the windshield of his Odyssey, driving westward toward the setting sun. “Somewhere there is. That’s what I do. I find them.”
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