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In humid, broadleaf‐dominated forests where gap dynamics and partial canopy mortality appears to dominate the disturbance regime at local scales, paleoecological evidence shows alteration at regional‐scales associated with climatic change. Yet, little evidence of these broad‐scale events exists in extant forests. To evaluate the potential for the occurrence of large‐scale disturbance, we used 76 tree‐ring collections spanning ∼840 000 km² and 5327 tree recruitment dates spanning ∼1.4 million km² across the humid eastern United States. Rotated principal component analysis indicated a common growth pattern of a simultaneous reduction in competition in 22 populations across 61 000 km². Growth‐release analysis of these populations reveals an intense and coherent canopy disturbance from 1775 to 1780, peaking in 1776. The resulting time series of canopy disturbance is so poorly described by a …