The shorter diameter, from east to west, was twenty-three feet, divided exactly even, eleven and one half feet from the centre each way.
The thickness of the bark averaged eighteen inches. This would add three feet to the diameter, making the total diameter as the tree originally stood, a little over twenty-seven feet one way, and twenty-six feet the other. That is eighty-five feet in circumference, six feet from the ground.
The age was ascertained thus: After it had been felled, it was again cut through about thirty feet from the first cut. At the upper end of this section, which was, of course, nearly forty feet above the ground, as the tree originally stood, they carefully counted the rings of annual growth, at the same time exactly measuring the width of each set of one hundred rings, counting from the outside inwards.
These were the figures:
| First hundred rings | 3.0 | inches. |
| Second hundred rings | 3 | " |
| Third hundred rings | 4 | " |
| Fourth hundred rings | 3 | " |
| Fifth hundred rings | 4 | " |
| Sixth hundred rings | 4 | " |
| Seventh hundred rings | 4 | " |
| Eighth hundred rings | 5 | " |
| Ninth hundred rings | 7 | " |
| Tenth hundred rings | 7 | " |
| Eleventh hundred rings | 10 | " |
| Twelfth hundred rings | 13 | " |
| Fifty-five years | 9.4 | " |
| 1,255 years. | 80.8 | inches. |
A small hole in the middle of the tree prevented the exact determining of the number of rings which had rotted away, or were missing from the centre; but allowing for that, as well as for the time which the tree must have taken to grow to the height at which they made the count, it is probably speaking within bounds, to say that this tree was, in round numbers, thirteen hundred years old!
As the table shows, this grove contains four trees over three hundred feet high. The heights of these big trees, in both the great groves, are usually overstated. The above measurements were carefully and scientifically made—in several cases repeated and verified—and may be relied on as correct.
The "Keystone State" enjoys the proud honor of lifting its head higher than any other tree now known to be standing on the western continent. Australia has trees a hundred and fifty feet higher. The stories occasionally told of trees over four hundred feet high having once stood in this grove, have no reasonable foundation and are not entitled to belief. Neither is it true, as some have marvelously asserted, that it takes two men and a boy, working half a day each, to look to the top of the highest tree in this grove.
The Calaveras trees, as a rule, are taller and slimmer than those of Mariposa. This has probably resulted from their growing in a spot more sheltered from the high winds which sweep across the Sierra, to which other groves have been more exposed.