EATON: SHADE TREES IN NEW HAVEN 
9 
“We will now listen to Mr. Eaton who will talk to us on Mineral Collect¬ 
ing in Connecticut”! 
As some of you know, New Haven has the oldest city Bureau exclu¬ 
sively devoted to Shade Tree care. Mr. George Cromie, in 1909 and 
1910 drew up a plan for the systematic care and replacement of street 
trees, and served as Superintendent of the then formed Tree Bureau 
until 1930. So we are not faced with any tremendous theoretical prob¬ 
lems in replacement of our trees or in caring for the injured ones. Out 
of 31,000 street trees (about 20,000 of these being 8" or larger in diam¬ 
eter) we lost over 4000 trees. (We lost about 11,000 park trees as well). 
We fear that mid-summer 1939 will reveal a situation necessitating the 
removal of many more street trees whose appearance of soundness today 
may later prove erroneous. 
Before darkness had set in the night of the storm, we had organized 
the city into 13 sections, with one of our 13 regular, old-time employees 
as foreman of each area, and were hiring extra men as fast as we could 
find them. A day and a half after this (when we already had thirty 
extra climbers working) we asked the Board of Finance for an appropri¬ 
ation and authorization to employ this extra help! Within twenty-four 
hours of the onset of the storm every street in the city was open at least to 
one-way traffic, and before 72 hours had passed there was no traffic 
obstruction remaining except in a few places where material had not yet 
been removed from the gutters. We since have removed over 2000 
dangerously leaning, loose, or wrecked trees, and are still doing this in 
3 of the 13 original areas. In the remaining 10 areas we are systemati¬ 
cally trimming the standing but storm-damaged trees. 
On some streets every single large tree suffered damage, necessitating 
systematic trimming of these trees. As an example, on two miles of 
Whitney Avenue we had to trim 280 very large elms, each of which suf- 
ferred storm injury. 
By October 8 I had completed a survey covering 442 miles of tree 
planting (221 miles of street) and at that time we noted 1440 downed 
trees or stumps; 360 completely removed; 790 to be removed; 167 to 
try to straighten; and 2000 needing immediate trimming (all these last 
presenting a dangerous condition to traffic). That was a hasty survey, 
made from an auto in about 110 hours. 
Now, two months later, we find we have already had to remove 1600 
more trees. We have trimmed 5500, straightened 560, and are still in 
the thick of it. Our emergency appropriation will last until the end of 
the year. By that time we think everything hazardous to the public 
