El Palo Alto is a Sequoia sempervirens located in El Palo Alto Park on the banks of San Francisquito Creek in Palo Alto, California, United States. El Palo Alto means the tall stick in Spanish.
El Palo Alto is currently 110 feet (33.5 meters) in height, down from 162.2 feet (49.4 meters) in 1814, its top progressively dying from 1865 to 1955 from lowering of the water table so that its roots could no longer reach water. The landmark redwood is 90 inches (2.3 meters) in diameter, and has a crown spread of 40 feet (12 meters). In 1955, an increment boring of the tree rings was taken and the tree's age was accurately determined to be 1,015 years. El Palo Alto originally had 3 trunks, but no one knows what happened to the first trunk. It remains as a stump attached to the current trunk. The second trunk fell in an 1886 flood and windstorm in the San Francisquito arroyo. It downed the second trunk.