History that Grows on You

(Big Yellow Taxi Redux)

As I sit writing this, I have in my possession a small green leaf from an oak tree I visited this morning in a lakeside park in a small town in northwest Iowa. Under the oak tree where I picked up this leaf was a plaque with the following inscription:

Charter Oak

In l687 King James II, King of England, demanded the Colonial Assembly of the New England Colonies return their charter. Captain Joseph Wadsworth allegedly hid it in the cavity of an oak tree which acquired the name Charter Oak. The Charter Oak was blown down in a windstorm on August 21, 1856. An acorn from that tree was planted in Hartford, Connecticut, and this tree is a descendant of the original Charter Oak.

Welcome to the Storm Lake Living Heritage Tree Museum...

The small park along the shore of the lake is home to about forty mature trees, all descended from trees connected to some part in history. Each tree is accompanied by an explanatory plaque which tells more about a snippet of history than it does about the tree, but each bit of history is connected to a tree growing in the park. Each tree has been grown from a seed, a graft or a cutting of some significant tree or its descendant. The two men responsible for this project, Stan Lemaster and Theodore Klein, started the project over forty years ago and were responsible for similar plantings in other parts of the country, though the Storm Lake project is considered the largest. Some of the tree choices are obscure, but interesting. Some of my favorites include:

The Versailles Chestnut – grown from a seed from a tree at the site of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles to end World War I.

The American Sycamore Moon – grown from a seed that was carried to the moon by the Apollo 14 flight.

The Lewis and Clark Cottonwood – from a tree that the explorers camped under in 1806 in Cut Bank, Montana.

The Delicious Apple Tree – grown from the cutting of the original Delicious Apple tree.

The Isaac Newton Apple Tree – grown from a graft of the tree Isaac Newton supposedly sat under while contemplating the laws of gravity. (I now possess a leaf from this tree as well. Most of the trees were just beginning to loose their leaves...)

The following inscriptions give a feel for the obscure, but interesting ties to history:

The Ann Rutledge Maple

The parent of this tree shades the grave of Ann Rutledge in the cemetery in Petersburg, Illinois. Ann Rutledge died at an early age and was the sweetheart of Abraham Lincoln. Her death is considered to be responsible for Lincoln's melancholy disposition.

Little House Cottonwood

The tree is grown from a cutting of a cottonwood planted at their homestead by Charles Ingalls in De Smet, South Dakota. The planting of the original tree is described in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Book, “By the Shores of the Silver Lake”

Having visited a wide variety of museums over the years, and seeing different strategies for making history come alive, I really enjoyed the simple, hands-on, approach to connecting events and people to a living tree. To sit under an apple tree descended from the same tree Isaac Newton sat under...to touch the bark of a sycamore grown from a seed that had been to the moon and back...to stand under an oak from an oak that was growing in America when Columbus first visited this hemisphere...seems to simultaneously expand and shrink one's concept of time and history. And an added plus, it was all free. I didn't even have to pay a dollar and a half to see 'em...

They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum

And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them

- Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi