In the summer of 1964 a geography graduate student named Donald L. Currey, with permission from the U.S. Forest Service, cut down a bristlecone pine tree nicknamed Prometheus that was growing on the slopes of Wheeler Peak in eastern Nevada. The tree turned out to be more than 4,900 years old, making it the oldest known tree (at the time) in the world.
There are various stories explaining why Currey cut down the ancient tree. According to the National Park Service’s webpage, Currey was conducting research on ice age glaciology in the region and had originally been granted permission to take tree core samples from several bristlecones to determine the age of glacial features of the area where the trees were growing.
“Currey was studying the different widths of the rings inside these bristlecone pines, which were believed to be over 4,000 years old, to determine patterns of good and bad growing seasons in the past. Because of their old age, these trees act as climatic vaults, storing thousands of years of weather data within their rings. This method of research is valuable to the study of climate change,” the site noted.
Apparently, he took a sample from Prometheus and, according to one version of the story, his borer broke off in the tree. Another version claimed he didn’t know how to core such a large tree or that his borer was too short. And yet another version is that he decided he needed a full cross section of the tree to better examine the tree rings.
Whatever the truth, which we may never know since Currey died in 2004 at the age of 70, Currey gained permission to cut down the tree.
The result was that for many years, many believed, ironically, that Currey had chopped down the oldest living tree in the world to see how old it was.
While Currey gave few interviews about the event during his lifetime, in 1998 he told reporter Carl T. Hall of the San Francisco Chronicle that he “knew it was a pretty old tree.” He said he didn’t know how old–or that it might be the oldest in the world—and assumed there were older trees living in the same grove.
Currey, who later expressed deep regret for the felling of Prometheus, went on to have a successful academic career at the University of Utah, spending several decades researching and exploring ancient Lake Bonneville among other things. He also testified in the mid-1980s on behalf of the effort to create Great Basin National Park, which provided permanent protection for the bristlecone pines in the Snake Range.
A few years after the felling of Prometheus, scientists discovered older bristlecone pine trees living in the White Mountains on the California-Nevada border. One, nicknamed Methuselah, is estimated to be some 5,065 years old and its believed there may be older ones that have not yet been dated.
Visitors to Great Basin National Park hiking up the trail leading to the glacial cirque at the base of Wheeler Peak can pass through several small groves of bristlecone pines, many of which have been dated to being more than 3,500 years old. And tucked away, amidst the other majestic, twisted, unique bristlecone trees is a flat, decaying stump—all that remains of Prometheus.
For more information about Prometheus, go to: https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/historyculture/the-prometheus-story.htm. Additionally, author Jim Sloan’s 1993 excellent book, “Nevada: True Tales from the Neon Wilderness,” contains a chapter on the cutting down of Prometheus.
