Heritage Tree Details Archives - Page 5 of 8 - Oregon Travel Information Council

Provisional Government Park Cottonwood

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Details |

Populus trichocarpa
This black cottonwood is prominent in photographs taken in 1900 and 1901 to document where the vote for a Provisional Government in Oregon took place. Francis X. Matthieu, the last living participant of the 1843 vote, is shown setting the location of this site in 1900 and unveiling the monument here in the ceremony of 1901.
The area around the monument is believed to be the first land purchased by …

Pow-Wow Tree

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Details |

Acer macrophyllum
This bigleaf maple is believed to have been a meeting place for local Native Americans since time immemorial, leading to its traditional name.
The Pow-Wow Tree has been the site of many notable events, including the first Clackamas County Fair in 1860, the first Oregon State Fair in 1861, and the Gladstone Pow-Wow Festival in 1937. The tree was dedicated as a Bicentennial Tree in 1979 and has become the …

Peg Tree

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Audio Tours, Heritage Tree Details |

Pseudotsuga menziesii
Early settlers in the “old town” area of Lake Oswego used this giant Douglas-fir as their lantern post by hanging a lantern on a peg driven into the side of the tree to conduct town meetings. In 1852, Oswego’s first Sunday school classes were held under the Peg Tree until a proper building could be built. Today it is the lone survivor of what was once a great row …

Owen Cherry

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Audio Tours, Heritage Tree Details |

Prunus avium
Folklore is that this tree was planted in 1847 by Eugene Skinner, co-founder of the City of Eugene in 1853. The tree is within the boundaries of Skinner’s 1850 Donation Land Claim. The General Land Office Survey of 1853 puts a cultivated area very close to this tree. It is known that Skinner had an orchard of fruit (peach and almond) trees in 1860, and since the cultivar cannot …

Octopus Tree

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Details |

Picea sitchensis
The forces that shaped this unique Sitka spruce (Picea sitschensis) have been debated for many years. Whether natural events or possibly Native Americans were the cause remains a mystery.
The tree measures more than 14 feet across at its base and has no central trunk. Instead, limbs extend horizontally as much as 30 feet before turning upward. It is 105 feet tall and is estimated to be around 250 years …

Moon Tree

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Audio Tours, Heritage Tree Details |

Pseudotsuga menziesii
This Rocky Mountain Douglas fir was raised from a seed carried to the moon by Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa in 1971.
The story begins in 1953 when a man named Stuart Roosa, a native of Oklahoma, took a job as a US Forest Service smokejumper, a firefighter who would parachute into the wilderness to fight forest fires. Roosa came to love the forests of Oregon, a love that he …

Monterey Cypress

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Audio Tours, Heritage Tree Details |

Cupressus macrocarpa
Seeds for this non-native tree were brought here by an unknown settler, but this particular tree was transplanted to its present location by Harrison Blake when he built his house in the 1850’s. Although this tree was surpassed in 1996 as the largest of its species in the nation, it still holds that distinction within the state.
The nearby Blake home, now housing the Chetco Valley Museum, is the oldest …

Mitchell Monument Shrapnel Tree

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Details |

Pinus ponderosa
The scars on this Ponderosa pine are the remaining evidence of Japanese bomb fragments, since chopped out, that hit the tree in World War II. In 1943, six thousand balloon bombs were launched by the Japanese, traveling the jet stream wind current over 6200 miles to their destination along our west coast. In 1945, six locals happened upon one of the unexploded bombs while setting out for a fishing …

Lonesome Hickory

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Details |

Carya ovata
Mary Louisa Black planted this shagbark hickory near her home in 1866 from nuts she carried from Missouri on the Oregon Trail in 1865. Of the nuts she planted, two grew into trees, This tree is the lone survivor of snow, summer heat and Rogue River flooding and the only shagbark hickory in the area.

Tree Facts

Approx. height: 18′
Age: 131 years
Circumference: 4′
Dedicated on: April 6, 1998

Visit this tree

It is located …

Jenkins Estate Elm Grove

Posted on: September 24th, 2011 in Heritage Tree Details |

Ulmus americana
In 1912, Belle and Ralph Jenkins purchased what is now the Jenkins Estate, Belle, the daughter of a prominent Portland businessman, Capt. J.C. Ainsworth, planted the elm grove between the original farmhouse and the main house in the style of an old English estate. American elms were a popular street tree in the early part of the 20th century, but have since been widely devastated due to Dutch elm …