Sometime in mid to late June 2004 another large pine tree standing a few yards away from the Longfellow Pine fell under high winds, taking a second ancient hemlock with it.  The Longfellow Pine now stands at the edge a forest clearing. Without these nearby trees to absorb the force of future high wind events, the Longfellow Pine has a much higher risk now of being damaged by windstorms than previously.   The fall of these adjacent trees was reported to ENTS by Dale Luthringer, Park Naturalist in a message to the ENTSTrees List on topica on June 28, 2004.

The purpose of my trip today was to photograph the fallen trees, canopy opening, and the Longfellow Pine itself..  Below are a selection of photographs from the trip.  I managed to take a vertical panorama of the Longfellow Pine itself, however the merge is poor because of the limitations of my digital camera in the face of the varying light conditions from the bottom to top of the tree.

Edward Frank 

The Longfellow Pine, Cook Forest State Park, PA - the tallest tree in northeastern United States.  The tree may be  350 years old, other trees in the area have been cored to similar ages.

Pan taken August 2004

Portrait of the Young family, father and daughter visiting the Park on this day. (If they email me, I will send them the original photograph files.)

Looking up the trunk of the Longfellow Pine

View showing the fallen pine broken by winds just above its base in the center of the picture, the Longfellow Pine in the background, and the root ball of an ancient hemlock knocked down by the falling pine. 

View of the fallen pine stump and log looking downhill. 

Another view of the broken pine tree.

View of the root-ball of the downed hemlock.

Panoramas of the area of the Longfellow Pine showing other trees, the Longfellow Pine, and the fallen pine and hemlock tree. 

Desktop size image of the Longfellow Pine, 1024 x 768, 550kb