In the 1930s Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. cleared about 250 trees out of Union Square and transplanted 41 more.
Bur Oak
Four of these five were standing before Chicago was. This page maps every bur oak on the site, 7 so far across 3 cities.
The bur oak is the prairie oak, its bark thick enough to survive the grass fires that once kept the Midwest open, so the old ones left in the city are survivors of the savanna it was built across. One in the grove on Wooded Island blew down around 2016 and its rings were counted back to roughly 1730. The oldest in the Union Ridge Cemetery savanna is put at 325 to 375 years. The oak on the Midway Plaisance was left standing when everything around it was cleared and regraded for the 1893 World's Fair. Local history makes a fourth a witness tree the Potawatomi used to find the route back to the Des Plaines River. Washington's is the exception: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. kept it in the 1930s while clearing about 250 trees out of Union Square.
Washington DC
Chicago
The oldest oak in this grove has been estimated at 325 to 375 years, which would make it roughly two centuries older than the city around it.
When the Midway Plaisance was cleared and regraded for the 1893 World's Fair, one tree was left standing, and this is it.
One of these oaks blew down around 2016, and its rings were counted back to roughly 1730.
Local history holds that this bur oak was a witness tree, a landmark the Potawatomi used to find the route back to the Des Plaines River after a hunt.
Dallas
This bur oak was already a mature tree when John Neely Bryan turned up in 1841 and founded the city.
Sam Houston camped at this spring in the summer of 1843 with his Indian treaty delegation, and by the account of the arborists who later dated it, the bur oak beside the water was already about six...
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