The Cherokee Park Tree

The ground under this bur oak was a campsite while Texas was still its own country. The Dallas Morning News and the Texas Historic Tree Coalition both describe the spot that way: a place people camped in the years of the Republic of Texas, between 1836 and 1845, before the state joined the Union. A generation later the land became Old City Park, established in 1876 as the first city park Dallas ever had. Today it is Dallas Heritage Village, twenty acres of living history laid out along paved paths, and the oak stands in the middle of it. The city grew up around the park, the park turned into a museum of the city's beginnings, and the tree stayed put through all of it. On 25 October 2023 the City Council voted unanimously to give Dallas its first Historic Tree designations, six sites in all, and this oak is one of them. Under the city code it cannot now be removed without the council's authorisation. Bur oaks carry the largest acorns of any North American oak, each sitting in a cup with a shaggy, fringed rim. Look down in autumn and you may find one. What nobody has published is anything about this particular tree's size: no age, no girth, no height, and no word on whether it was already growing when those campers came through. If you have stood beside it with a tape measure, tell us.