Angel Oak — remarkable tree
Image by RegalShave from Pixabay

Angel Oak

  • 2 min read
  • 32.718° N 80.079° W

Interesting facts

  • In May 2026 the Angel Oak was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the first tree in South Carolina to receive that recognition.
  • The tree stands on land that formed part of a 96-acre grant to the colonist Abraham Waight in 1717, and stayed with his descendants for four generations.
  • The oak passed to Justus Angel through his marriage settlement with Martha Waight in 1810, and the Angel family held the land until the mid-1900s.
  • Its ground was bought from the Cussoe people in 1675 by an agent of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, one of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina.
  • In 2008 Samantha Siegel, then 26, launched a Save the Angel Oak petition against housing planned beside the tree; the developer later went bankrupt.

Why it is worth it

The Angel Oak is a southern live oak growing on Johns Island, in the Lowcountry just south-west of Charleston, and it is less a tree than a small landscape. The trunk is about 8.5 metres around, but the height, some twenty metres, is modest; what overwhelms is the spread. Its limbs, heavy as trunks themselves, reach out horizontally in every direction, dip to the ground, rest on it and rise again, so that the crown shades roughly 1,600 square metres. The longest branch runs for about 57 metres. It is a living example of how a live oak, given open ground and centuries, grows out rather than up.

How old it is nobody knows. Far greater ages have been claimed and are still repeated, but estimates of about 400 to 500 years are more widely accepted, and even those are debated. The name comes not from the heavens but from Justus Angel and his wife Martha Waight Tucker Angel, former owners of the land. Local folklore, rooted in the plantation history of the island, adds another layer: stories tell of the ghosts of enslaved people appearing around the tree as angels.

The tree has had narrow escapes. Hurricane Hugo tore at it in 1989, and it recovered. The City of Charleston has owned the tree and the small park around it since 1991, and when housing development threatened the surrounding woodland, the Lowcountry Land Trust bought, in 2013, 17 adjacent acres to protect the oak's setting. In 2018 an acorn from the tree was germinated and planted, a "Baby Angel" to carry on its line. Standing under its canopy, where the branches bend down to the level of your head and then sweep away over the grass, it is easy to see why people treat it with something like reverence.

Getting there

Angel Oak Park is on Johns Island, about 15 km from central Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston International Airport (CHS) is about 20 km away. The park is reached by car along the island's roads.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Remarkable Trees in the United States 5The Most Remarkable Trees 19The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in the United States 25The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests 232

From the encyclopaedia

Angel Oak is an exceptionally large southern live oak located in Angel Oak Park on Johns Island near Charleston, South Carolina. The tree is estimated to be 400–500 years old. It stands 66.5 ft tall, measures 28 ft in circumference, and produces shade that covers 17,200 square feet. Its longest branch distance is 187 ft in length. Angel Oak was the 210th tree registered with the Live Oak Society. The tree was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2026.

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