natural histories: Sycamore Shoals

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"While at the site I walked down to the river to see if there were still any sycamores at Sycamore Shoals. Like any other riverbank in the valley, there were several. The largest one I located couldn’t be measured because it leaned out over the water. From the two or three I was able to get a tape around, I’d estimate the big one to be over 12 feet in circumference. But, these trees are anonymous; they grow quietly along the shoreline out of the limelight. If you ask anyone that works or volunteers at the state park, they’ll tell you the most famous sycamore at the site is the 30-year-old “Moon Tree” planted inside the stockade.

Sycamores had long been rallying points. Before the American Revolution, colonial patriots designated a large tree in each colony as a 'Liberty Tree,' secret meeting places, to gather and plot against the British. Many of these special sites were sycamores because in those early days they were giants. Their massive girth made them the largest deciduous hardwoods in North America. In 1802, François Michaux found an aged sycamore on the bank of the Ohio River, 36 miles from Marietta, that measured an astonishing 47 feet in circumference. Michaux and his botanist father André traveled extensively throughout the east in the 1700s and early 1800s. They were studying and collected items of natural history, particularly trees."


Excerpt from Natural Histories published by the University of Tennessee Press

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