Today, Chimney Rock is estimated be 325 feet from tip to base and 120 feet for the spire. Over the years, many people have tried to measure the Rock.
- 1830: Warren Angus Ferris offered the first known estimate of Chimney Rock, "It is half a mile in circumference at the base and rises to the height of three hundred feet.
- 1830: Captain Benjamin Bonneville wrote, "From the summit shoots up a shaft or column, about one hundred and twenty feet in height, from which it derives its name."
- 1849: Forty-niner David Cosad used the centuries-old method of measuring his shadow against the rock's to come up with a figure of 360 feet from the base to the top.
- 1864: Captain Eugene Ware wrote, "We estimated the height of the chimney itself to be eighty-five feet. Elston said that it was the belief of the trappers that during the last fifteen years it had crumbled down from the top about thirty-five feet."
- 1895: The United States Geological Survey, using scientific instruments, calculated the elevation
