Ask most people to picture the tallest tree in the world and they’ll imagine something out of a fairy tale. In truth, it’s a real, living giant hiding in a quiet corner of Northern California. Its name is Hyperion, and it’s the record holder among all trees in the world, coast redwood royalty standing taller than the Statue of Liberty.
This post covers what makes Hyperion the tallest living tree on the planet, how it was discovered and measured, and why one of the largest trees on Earth is now closed to visitors.
Watch our video guide or read more below.
What Is the Tallest Tree in the World?
The tallest tree in the world is Hyperion, a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) growing deep inside Redwood National Park in Humboldt County, California. As of its most recent measurement, Hyperion stands at 116.22 metres, or about 381.3 feet. That makes it the tallest known living tree ever recorded, taller than Big Ben, taller than Niagara Falls, and about 1.25 times the height of the Statue of Liberty.
Hyperion isn’t a fossil or a folk legend. It’s a genuine, growing, breathing organism, estimated to be somewhere between 600 and 800 years old. Compared to some ancient redwoods that have stood for close to 2,000 years, that actually makes Hyperion middle aged.
Big Tree Country: Redwood National Park
Redwood National Park, together with the surrounding state parks, protects some of the last old growth forest of its kind on Earth. Roughly 95% of the original redwood forest was logged during the 1800s and 1900s, so the trees still standing here are a small, precious remnant of a much larger forest. The park sits along California’s northern coast, stretching down toward Humboldt and up near the Oregon border, and it’s home to a cluster of the tallest trees anywhere.
This isn’t a single big tree standing alone. It’s a whole forest of giants. Coast redwoods thrive here because of the coastal fog, mild temperatures, and deep, moist soil, ideal conditions that let a single trunk climb well past 350 feet over centuries of steady growth.
Hyperion, Helios & Icarus: The Park's Tallest Trees
Hyperion isn’t the only towering sequoia in the neighbourhood. Redwood National Park is also home to Helios and Icarus, two other record breaking trees named, like Hyperion, after figures from Greek mythology. Helios measures around 377 feet, and Icarus comes in at roughly 371 feet. Together, this trio represents some of the tallest trees ever measured by botanists and foresters.
It’s worth noting that “tallest” and “largest” aren’t the same thing. Hyperion is the tallest tree living today by height, but the General Sherman Tree, a giant sequoia in California, holds the title of largest tree in the world by trunk volume and overall mass. Giant sequoias and coast redwoods are related but distinct species, with sequoias generally growing wider and coast redwoods growing taller. Sequoias, coast redwoods, and even the towering Eucalyptus regnans of Tasmania and mountain ash forests elsewhere all compete for a spot among the tallest tree species on the planet, but none has yet matched Hyperion’s height.
How Hyperion Was Discovered and Measured
Hyperion was discovered on August 25, 2006, by naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor, who spent years searching remote stretches of old growth forest for undiscovered giants. Finding a tree like this takes patience: a promising trunk first gets a laser estimate from the ground, and only the most promising candidates get climbed and measured by hand.
That’s exactly what happened with Hyperion. Botanist and redwood researcher Stephen Sillett helped verify the tree’s dimensions by climbing into the crown and lowering a tape measure to the forest floor, a far more accurate method than a laser reading alone. The original 2006 measurement put Hyperion at 115.55 metres. A later measurement, carried out in 2019 and recognised by Guinness World Records, put the tree at 116.07 metres. The most recent figure, from 2026, has Hyperion at 116.22 metres, or 381.3 feet, and a trunk volume of around 530 cubic metres, underlining just how much a single tree can grow over centuries.
Measuring a tree this size isn’t simple. Coast redwoods draw water from the soil all the way up to the crown against gravity, and the taller a tree grows, the harder that column of water is to maintain. Researchers studying these limits, including work published in Nature by Sillett and colleagues, believe there may be a natural ceiling on how tall a tree can physically grow, somewhere not too far above where Hyperion already stands.
Why You Can't Visit Hyperion Anymore
For years, Hyperion had no official trail, no signage, and no marker on any park map. Its exact location was deliberately kept quiet by the National Park Service. That didn’t stop word from spreading online, and by the early 2020s, growing numbers of hikers were bushwhacking through dense, fragile old growth forest to reach it.
The damage added up. Coast redwoods have shallow, wide reaching root systems rather than deep taproots, so foot traffic around the base compacts the soil and harms the tree. Rangers also reported trampled ferns, informal trails cut through the undergrowth, litter, and even human waste left behind near the site.
As a result, the area around Hyperion is now a closed zone. Anyone caught hiking into it risks a fine of up to $5,000 and as much as six months in jail. The National Park Service has been blunt about the trade off, asking visitors to decide whether they’ll help preserve this landscape or contribute to its destruction. It’s a strange twist for the tallest tree in the world: the very fame that made Hyperion a bucket list destination is what put it, and the forest around it, at risk.
Where to See Tall Trees Instead
The good news is that you don’t need to track down Hyperion to experience trees in the world on this scale. Redwood National Park’s Tall Trees Grove offers a roughly 4.5 mile round trip hike through genuine old growth forest, past coast redwoods that rival Hyperion in grandeur without requiring anyone to go off trail. It’s a far gentler way to stand beneath these living giants and appreciate what makes them so extraordinary, without adding to the pressure on one particular, fragile tree.
Whether you’re drawn to Hyperion’s exact height in ft, its discovery story, or just the idea that something this size is still quietly growing on a hillside in California, one thing is clear: the tallest tree in the world is a reminder of how much life a forest can hold when it’s given centuries, and enough respect, to grow.
Watch the video guide to Hyperion and the World’s Tallest Trees for a closer look, and explore more species guides at Trees Across the World.