CHAPTER XV 



Daniel Boone's "Bar Tree" Beech of Great Cloud Island A Beech 

 of Milwaukee Beeches of Camp Robinson Origin of Weeping 

 Beeches Black Walnut of Stony Point Whipping Tree of Fish- 

 kill Black Walnut of Maplewood Walnut Beside Washington's 

 Tomb The Treaty Tree of Philipse Manor. 



Daniel Boone's "Bar Tree" 



At Cumberland Gap, the famous mountain pass near the borders 

 of Tennessee and Kentucky, is a tablet, placed there by the Tennessee 

 Daughters of the Revolution, and bearing these words: "Daniel 

 Boone's Trail from North Carolina to Kentucky, 1769." 



Nearby, on the bank of Carroll Creek which flows into the Wat- 

 auga River, is an immense beech known as "Daniel Boone's Bar 

 Tree," from the inscription cut in the bark, "D Boone cill EDA 

 B A R On tree in the Y E A R 1760." The trunk of the beech 

 measures twenty-eight and one-half feet around, at a distance of four 

 and one-half feet from the ground, and its height would equal eighty- 

 five feet if it stood erect ; it leans south, however, at an angle of thirty 

 degrees. The United States Forest Service has estimated its age at 

 from three hundred and forty to three hundred and sixty years. 



The Forest Examiner, Mr. Wilbur R. Mattoon, describes the 

 tree as "a living record of an event in the life of probably the first 

 white man to venture into the heavy forests formerly covering the 

 western slopes of the middle Appalachians." Inhabitants of the 

 region told Mr. Mattoon that the original inscreption was legible as 

 late as from 1875 to 1885, a surprisingly long period for it to endure. 

 The figures 1815 carved also on the trunk can still be clearly read, 

 but we have no record of the event to which they refer. 



Beech of Great Cloud Island 



The only beech tree ever known to grow within the borders of 

 Minnesota, stood on Great Cloud Island, in the Mississippi River, 

 between St. Paul and Hastings. It is mentioned in the journal kept 

 by Major Thomas Forsythe, a member of Colonel Leavenworth's 

 expedition of 1819, which was sent out for the purpose of establishing 

 Fort Snelling. The Indians called the tree "Medicine Wood," sig- 

 nifying "simply miraculous or wonderful tree." 



Forsythe comments on it was follows: "Medicine Wood takes 

 its name from a large beech tree, which kind of wood the Sioux are 

 not acquainted with, and supposing that the Great Spirit has placed 

 it there as a genii to protect or punish them according to their merits 

 or demerits." 



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