Sir Joseph Hooker Luminary Art Bench

In 1877, during a botanical specimen-collecting tour of the West, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) visited John and Annie Bidwell and was invited to see the "Big Oak." Hooker proclaimed the tree to be "the largest of its species in the known world." Because he was the most famous botanist of the time, the tree was thereafter referred to as the "Hooker Oak."