About ten thousand dollars in gold spent the Civil War in the ground under this oak. Charles Turner, a farmer, merchant and Texas Ranger, opposed secession, yet he still paid to raise a Confederate volunteer company. Where he drew the line was his savings. He would not swap them for Confederate paper, so he buried the gold here, on his own farm, and waited. When the war was over he dug it up and put it to work. The money helped the young city of Fort Worth pay its debts to northern creditors during Reconstruction, and the city counts Turner among its founders. His farm became Greenwood Memorial Park, and the oak is the first thing you meet inside the gate, standing in a traffic circle with two plaques at its feet. One tells the gold story. The other, from the Daughters of the American Revolution, names it a Bicentennial Tree, alive when the United States Constitution was signed. That plaque is also the best evidence for its age. A 2009 record put the tree at about 220 years, which makes it somewhere around 235 now, and nobody holds a planting date to sharpen that. Gathering Growth taped it in 2021 at 427 centimetres round and 12 metres tall, with a crown about 18 metres across. It is an evergreen live oak, so it looks much the same in January as in July. Cars now circle the spot where a fortune once sat in the dirt.
Greenwood Memorial Park, 3100 White Settlement Rd, Fort Worth, TX 76107 You can recognise it by the two plaques at its base, one telling the buried gold story. It stands in the traffic circle just past Greenwood Memorial Park's main entrance, directly behind the first park sign.
Free. Inside Greenwood Memorial Park, an active public cemetery with a paved two-lane road throughout; the tree stands in a traffic circle just past the main entrance, directly behind the first park sign. Visit during the cemetery's normal daylight hours.
No transit stop directly outside; nearest bus service is on White Settlement Rd, about a 5-minute walk from the entrance. Easiest by car, free parking on site.