Why Does America Hide The World’s Oldest Tree?

What the film says

1. Great Basin National Park charges no entrance fee.

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2. The Wheeler Peak bristlecone trails start just under 10,000 feet.

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3. In 1964, geographer Donald R. Currey was studying ice-age glacial features under Wheeler Peak with US Forest Service permission to core bristlecones. One account says his increment borer broke in Prometheus.

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4. The Forest Service gave permission to cut Prometheus down in August 1964.

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5. Prometheus had 4,862 growth rings, and its age is estimated at about 4,900 years.

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6. A cross-section of Prometheus is on display at the Great Basin Visitor Center.

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7. Currey went on to spend decades studying ancient Lake Bonneville at the University of Utah. He died in 2004.

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8. Mount Washington has the largest bristlecone grove in Great Basin National Park. It has no developed trails.

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9. In bristlecones, each root feeds only the section of the tree above it, so old trees often survive on one or two strips of living bark.

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10. Great Basin National Park's 2013 America the Beautiful quarter shows a bristlecone pine on a rocky glacial moraine.

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11. The Sierra Nevada rain shadow dries out the Great Basin, and its mountain ranges act as isolated 'sky islands' for bristlecones.

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12. Edmund Schulman found Methuselah's grove in 1957. He published 'Bristlecone Pine, Oldest Known Living Thing' in National Geographic in March 1958.

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13. Methuselah is about 4,850+ years old, consistent with ~4,856 in 2025.

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14. Methuselah stands along the Methuselah Trail at Schulman Grove, but no sign marks which tree it is.

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15. Tom Harlan reported a White Mountains bristlecone at about 5,062 years old, from a core Schulman took in 1957. The core can no longer be found, so the age is unconfirmed.

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16. Climate warming has let mountain pine beetles expand into high-elevation pine forests of the Great Basin.

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17. Facing budget problems, the Forest Service froze seasonal hiring heading into fiscal 2025.

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18. In June 2025, Sen. Mike Lee proposed selling federal land (2.2 to 3.3 million acres) in the reconciliation bill. He withdrew the proposal after the parliamentarian's ruling and public backlash.

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