Henry Bergfeld, right, and John Edmundson plant an oak tree at the Witte Museum that is a descendant of the historic Treaty Oak from Austin that was poisoned in 1989. At left are Sam Mitts, president of the Real Estate Council, and City Councilman Carol Schubert. New trees were grown from the Treaty Oak’s acorns and cuttings and planted in San Antonio and around Austin.I wonder if you could update us on the Treaty Oak in Austin that was practically murdered.
The Treaty Oak’s fame got a boost in 1927 when it was nominated to the American Forestry Association’s Hall of Fame of Trees, with its portrait hanging in the association’s Washington, D.C., headquarters and the additional distinction of having been cited as “the most perfect specimen of a North American tree” for its size and symmetry.
The Legislature voted against a 1935 resolution to buy the property; but two years later, the city closed the deal for $1,000 and turned the property into the Caldwell Treaty Oak Park, with a historical marker commemorating the tree “as a living and fitting symbol of the mighty state it has watched develop.”
Tradition estimates the Treaty Oak to be more than 500 years old, while foresters claim a more cautious 300, although the green giant — 50 feet high and 90 feet wide before the attack — may have been “only the latest sprout off a common root system dating back thousands of years,” as Austin city forester John Giedraitis said in “Treating the Treaty Oak,” a presentation to the Fourth Urban Forestry Conference in 1989, not long after the crime was discovered.
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