SALEM, Ore. -- For the time being, Oregon has a new state champion Sitka spruce.

But there's a challenger lurking in the coastal forests of Lincoln County, and it will be a couple of weeks before managers of Cape Meares National Wildlife Refuge can rest assured that their giant spruce is the biggest in the state.

The scramble to find a state champ started Dec. 2 when the reigning world champion, the Klootchy Creek Spruce near Cannon Beach, was blown down in a windstorm and one of the top contenders also was knocked out of contention.

Brian French and Will Koomjian of Portland, two arborists who climb around in the tops of Oregon giants measuring and evaluating them, settled on a tree on Cape Meares as the biggest left standing.

The Cape Meares spruce, about a quarter mile inland from the ocean and 200 yards off the Three Camps Scenic Route, measured 144 feet tall, 15 1/2 feet in diameter, 56 feet in circumference and wears a crown that averages 93 feet across.

A contender for the title of champion Sitka is the 190-foot Sitka that's known as "The Giant Spruce" at Cape Perpetua Scenic Area near Yachats. It's an estimated 600 years old, and volunteers at the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center say the tree, a one-mile hike from the visitors center, is 15 to 18 feet in diameter and more than 56 feet in circumference.

"I'm not familiar with that tree, but the statistics are impressive, and I'll definitely have to look into it," French said. "My notes have no reference to it, but I found it on the Web and it looks like a beautiful tree. It's going to be very close."

He plans to climb and measure "The Giant Spruce" soon. In the meantime, John Venner, a volunteer at the visitor center, plans to measure the lower extremes of the tree. He's adamant that, in the vernacular, "We was robbed."

Venner said: "I'm definitely excited about hearing about a potential champion. The Oregon Registry of Big Trees doesn't even know about it, so right now the Cape Meares tree is standing as the state champion until it's dethroned."

Sally Lockyear of Yachats recently led a drive to get "The Giant Spruce" at Cape Perpetua recognized as an Oregon Heritage Tree, but she did not push for state champion recognition even though she knew of the demise of the Klootchy Creek Spruce.

"We never had any expectations about that," she said. "We knew the Klootchy Creek tree was older and larger, but "The Giant Spruce" is very large, very old and very beautiful. We never put it in a contest, but we know it's a fantastic tree."

French said the Cape Meares tree likely was about identical in size to the Klootchy Creek tree at one time, but like all old giants, its top was blown out about 100 years ago. He estimates its age at 750 to 800 years.

"At one time it was a massive, massive tree, very close in size to the one at Klootchy Creek," he said. Even with a broken-out top, the Klootchy Creek tree was 206 feet tall, 15.9 feet in diameter, 56 feet in circumference and about 750 years old.

It scored 856 on a forester's test that measures all aspects of the tree, barely inching out a tree on Quinault Lake in Olympic National Forest in Washington that scored 883 and has long claimed the title of world co-champion.

Venner said pamphlets in the Cape Perpetua visitor center say "The Giant Spruce" was 225 feet tall until the Columbus Day Storm of 1962, when it lost 35 feet out of its top, and that it now measures 190 feet.

One reason French thinks the Cape Meares tree will hold up as the biggest is that its trunk remains fatter for longer than "The Giant Spruce."

"The Cape Meares tree still is 12 feet in diameter 70 feet aloft, so it keeps its girth," French said. "And from what I've read, the tree at Cape Perpetua was measured at the ground. We make our measurements for diameter and circumference at breast height. We'll have to make a determination where the roots stop and the trunk begins, then we'll go up 4 1/2 feet from there and start our measuring."

The spruce at Cape Meares, ironically, isn't even the best-known tree on the cape.

"Our most famous tree is the Octopus tree," said Dawn Grafe, visitor services manager for the Oregon Coast Wildlife Refuge Complex.

The Octopus tree, also a Sitka spruce, is 60 feet in diameter at its base and has several trunks reaching skyward like an octopus.

Visitors who want to see the Cape Meares tree should follow the Three Capes Scenic Route, a county road that begins in Tillamook and ends at Highway 101 near Pacific City.

At the turnoff to Cape Meares State Scenic Area, there's a small gravel parking area and an interpretive sign at the turnoff's intersection with the Three Capes Scenic Route.

"You can walk to it, but -- this is very important -- at the interpretive sign you don't want to go to the right," Grafe said. "That's the Oregon Coast Trail, and it will take you through the heart of the refuge and on to the north. You want to go left, and this trail dead ends at the tree."

There is no sign at the tree, but Pete Marvin, the manager of Cape Lookout State Park and Cape Meares State Scenic Area, plans to have one made for the U.S. Fish Wildlife Service.

Grafe said there are no plans to build a deck or fencing around the tree, like there was at Klootchy Creek. The decking was designed to keep tourists from affecting the tree's root system.

"We don't want to fence it off. That would mar the area," Grafe said. "If people start putting graffiti on it or climbing it and destroying it, we'll consider doing something like that, but at this point we're sitting back and seeing how popular it's going to be. We'll monitor it."