When Texas Christian University moved onto its permanent Fort Worth campus, it had exactly one tree, and the students had to bring it themselves. A small plaque in the turf, dedicated in 2011, says so: the only tree on the new campus was this live oak, transplanted "from the forest" by the class of 1912. That class had reason to care. Fire had destroyed the university's former home in Waco, and they were the first students to graduate from the new grounds in Fort Worth. In the spring of 1912 they worked with the Texas Shade Tree Company to dig up a large live oak growing in woods near the campus and move it onto the site. This one took. Everything else grew up around it. The campus is now thick with trees, and this is where they started. The Original Oak spreads its canopy across the middle of the grounds, just west of University Drive and northeast of Reed Hall. Nobody has recorded its age. It was already a large tree when the seniors moved it in 1912, so it is well over a century old, and how much older is anyone's guess until somebody measures it. If you know its girth, tell us.
Texas Christian University campus, just west of University Drive and northeast of Reed Hall, Fort Worth, TXYou can recognise it by the small 2011 plaque in the turf beside it, reading Original Oak Tree. It stands in the middle of the TCU campus, just west of University Drive and northeast of Reed Hall.
Free, on the open Texas Christian University campus.
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