This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
With arms that once flexed and reached to the sky, the limbs of the beloved Sitka spruce “muscle tree” at the entrance of Yaquina Bay State Park, now stop short.
After a five-hour takedown Monday, the Sitka spruce where many have made memories – from commemorating graduations to taking wedding photos – now stands as a snag.
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department determined the rotting tree was unsafe and in April asked the community what to do with the 150-year-old tree. It later announced it would be taken down in June.
Community responses came up with varying ideas from donating the wood to local artists to keeping it as a snag for wildlife to use. The parks department is combining multiple ideas.
“Just knowing the habitat it can provide,” said Burke Martin, the manager at Yaquina Bay State Park. “It’s a midway point, where it can still be a resource to the community, though in a different capacity.”
Most of the wood removed Monday was diseased, Martin said. But there is enough to create an educational kiosk to memorialize the tree – a project the parks department would likely start after the busy summer months, Burke said.
There is enough to possibly donate to a local high school or artist, but the department is still weighing the options and will again use its community comment form to figure out what should be done, he said.
Now that the limbs are cut, Martin believes they can also get a more accurate estimate on the age of the tree by reading the rings on the piece of wood from the oldest limb that “flexes” out from the trunk.
The tree’s arms are still just outward, no longer tall, but still distinctive. A red fabric heart still sits in the hollow space of a fallen limb – which he felt held a shared sentiment between the community and the parks department.
“I’m glad everyone is safe, but there is a little bit of sadness,” Martin said. “All the trees are very special to us, we didn’t necessarily want to do this, but we did it for the safety of park participants.”
In the months leading to the big chop, people shared the memories they made with the tree. Over the years, people have witnessed cars crash into its trunk, have taken wedding photos next to it, and commemorated milestones with the tree.
Douglas Peterson of Beaverton likes to think none of those memories would have been possible if his late father-in-law hadn’t saved the tree.
As a young man, Peter Garibbo was working in the Civilian Conservation Corps to help build the park, constructing the “comfort station” and road leading into the park. When Garibbo came upon the unusual tree, he told his boss and they decided to split the road and save it for future generations, Peterson said.
“For the rest of Peter’s life, every time that Peter and his wife, Bernice, came to Newport, he would take the time to drive by ‘his’ tree,” Peterson said.
And when Peterson visits the coast he drives by the tree and points it out proudly, a family history and a symbol to him.
“Symbolically it meant that nature could coexist; that we could build roads around trees,” he said.
- Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at Shayla@LincolnChronicle.org
