What is the oldest tree in New Bedford?

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What is the oldest tree in New Bedford?

Cheryl Johnson

Trees remain in New Bedford today that breathed the same air as Herman Melville when he embarked on a grand whaling adventure; as Frederick Douglass when he freshly tasted freedom; and perhaps as the indigenous people who lived before the birth of New Bedford.

Many lifetimes separate us humans from that era, and most trees fell to become the whaling ships and great mansions in a 19th century boomtown. Those that survived have now stood for centuries — and are a bridge in time to when New Bedford was a pristine forest on the edge of the continent.

Finding the oldest trees requires taking a tour of the oldest protected land in the city, detouring into forgotten corners along busy highways, and venturing through New Bedford’s own forbidden forest. Along the way will be regal Atlantic white cedars, massive black oaks, and towering European beeches — but perhaps the oldest trees will be those most overlooked.

The journey begins — like all worthwhile New England expeditions — in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.

Chance Perks and Erik Danielson pore over technical maps before the tour starts. Perks is a conservation agent for the City of New Bedford, and a former city arborist. Danielson works for Harvard’s Tree Ring Lab. When he’s not carbon-dating tree samples professionally, he has made a hobby of searching for — and finding —  some of the oldest and largest trees in New England.

Short of boring a hole into every tree within 25 square miles and analyzing samples in Danielson’s lab, today’s effort will include a targeted survey of the forgotten places where trees may have survived the longest. Using geographical features and a knowledge of land use throughout the city’s history, Perks and Danielson will go where old trees might be. Then they’ll look for the right characteristics, indicator organisms, and other clues that suggest advanced age.

A common misconception might be to look for the biggest trees, the guides explain. Even in the woods, big and fast-growing trees might suggest a younger or middle-aged tree. Old trees, like really old trees, grow slowly, with dense trunks and gnarled branches that have survived hurricanes and snowstorms — and maybe even snapped in half at some point — only to continue growing through more decades and centuries.

The tour stops first in the north part of the city, where a sprawling ancient forest and treacherous swampland hide. Its ecosystem and trees are a rare treasure anywhere in the post-industrial world, and they are especially surprising to find within the city limits of an East Coast metropolis.

The Acushnet Cedar Swamp

Perhaps the best kept secret in New Bedford, the approximately 2,100-acre reserve in New Bedford’s North End accounts for nearly an eighth — almost 15% — of the city’s land area. The contiguous forestland that it touches covers almost a quarter of the city. 

Some residents barely know it’s here. Even fewer have ventured inside.

With the King’s Highway Dunkin’ only 1.5 miles in the rearview mirror, the guides find somewhere to park off the pavement, gear up, and traipse into the woods. The key to this area’s survival, says Perks, the city’s conservation agent, is its impenetrability. 

Some trees here are centuries old, protected by the “deep and dangerous mire” that can easily trap someone up to their waist or chest. A land surveyor who got stuck later wrote: “Substance felt like a syrupy peat beneath the surface. Cause of these mires … is unknown.” 

In the upland area, lofty white and pitch pines dominate the skyline, and the underbrush is full of summersweet, a deciduous shrub whose ambrosial white and pink flowers bloom in summertime shade. Only in the deepest parts of these woods, where the land descends into the impenetrable swamps, can one find the famous Atlantic white cedars that give the area its name — and today they are the prize.

The surveyors who evaluated this land when it was sold to the state, in 1971, took core samples from some cedars. The oldest had at least 156 tree rings — which, if it still stands today, would make the tree more than 210 years old. That means the specimen not only predates Melville’s and Douglass’ time in New Bedford, it is older than both men.

The surveyor’s report noted that, ecologically speaking, this land was uncatalogued and ripe for further study. Estimates for other cedars ranged as high as 175 years old (or about 230 years old today). A “beautiful” grove of hemlock trees added “another dimension” to the value of the site. Meanwhile, a small, densely-grown island within the swamp was estimated to have at least 78 plant species in 1.5 acres.

Ecologists and surveyors were also downright poetic about the land, praising the “unspoiled example of nature reflecting true integrity.” One surveyor, John Richardson, of the state’s Department of Natural Resources, provided this ode:

“The water is high, the going rough and wet, but the unspoiled beauty, the subtle changes of light and shadow, the color, the odors, the songs of birds and the mental knowledge of your isolation is a supreme natural experience. I hope that someday others might know the wonderful, life-enriching experiences of this uncommon and varied wetland.”

More than 50 years later, that isolation — amazingly — remains. This land lacks a formal access point, any maintained trails, or any information center. Footsteps here fall into a thick carpet of humus, while branches of pine interlock overhead. There’s no rush of cars, nor thrum of city life, nor rustle of hikers. 

Perks and Danielson, while foraging toward the well-hidden cedars, make a competition of reciting Latin plant names. Along the way, they point out the sassafras, birch, and blueberry twigs that make for good munching (which all present partake in).

Suddenly, there appears a swampy pool with towering and fragrant trees: the Atlantic white cedars.

Danielson, from Harvard’s Tree Ring Lab, catches his breath when he sees the cedars. “These are gorgeous,” he says, and wades straight into the swamp. With a special outfit on his camera, Danielson closely examines the tree bark. Next, he takes a laser hypsometer from his pack — a binocular-looking measuring device — and shoots a beam toward the canopy. After a little bit of trigonometry, Danielson deduces that the cedars reach upwards of 70 feet.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Danielson announces that he has made a discovery.

He summarizes his findings, these trees — the very first cedars encountered today — are likely about 120 years old, and probably no older than 150 years. But on the bark he found tiny, almost microscopic evidence that could connect these trees to old growth forests. Danielson says he found “pin lichens,” and turns his camera to show the proof.

Pin lichens, which are 2-millimeter-tall colonies of fungi and algae, protrude from the bark like miniature pillars of creation. Danielson explains that these microorganisms are an indicator of mature forest ecosystems, and they are most often observed in old growth forests. The lichens spread extremely slowly, and they find support in complex systems of continual growth and decay. Their presence is also highly correlated with good air quality.

Such a finding in New Bedford is a welcome surprise — especially to a now-beaming conservation agent.

Later on, a call to the property’s former owner, Peter Hawes, adds further evidence connecting this area to old growth forests. Upon selling the land, in 1971, Hawes said that surveyors took him out into the hardest-to-reach sections of the swamp. They showed him “virgin cedars,” Hawes said, indicating that those trees had not been touched in centuries.

“I was quite taken aback,” Hawes said on encountering those trees. Hawes said two men couldn’t link arms when reaching around the trunks. These were different from any trees Hawes had seen before.

And if there were trees that Hawes hadn’t seen, they were indeed rare. For decades, Hawes had gone into these woods to cut and sell cedar. His family owned the Acushnet Saw Mill Co., an operation that fed New Bedford’s growth with fences, shingles, and furniture. The family company was founded in 1865 by Jonathan C. Hawes, his great-grandfather, who acquired this land when he returned from a whaling expedition into the Bering Sea — and from one of the strangest footnotes in American history.¹

That they’d already made new discoveries, 50 years after the land became a protected reserve, suggested to Perks and Danielson how much was left to learn. “When Europeans arrived, the entire landscape and ecosystem changed,” said Perks. “Even the composition of the soil… All the species here.” He shook his head. “We don’t even know all that we lost.”

Even cursory observation gave these guides much excitement. For example, out of the swamp grew a huge pitch pine — a species that tends to prefer dry, sandy soil. A possible explanation, the guides said, was that the tree had established itself and grown to maturity before the area had been dammed up, in the 1880s. “If that tree’s older than the water table, it could be a sneaky candidate for the oldest tree here,” Perks said. Meanwhile, all around were scraggly black tupelo trees. Those, Danielson said, may have escaped logging (especially with so many cedar and pine nearby) and also were a species that could easily grow for centuries.

With such beauty and rare natural heritage, the thought occurs that maybe it’s better to make sure no humans ever disturb this place. Wouldn’t it be better to put up a fence and make sure the public never has the chance to threaten these trees?

But Perks and Danielson don’t think that way. Danielson says there are places with delicate species that ought to be left alone, but this isn’t one. “Disconnection from nature is a part of how society has accepted so much habitat loss,” which Danielson said is the number one threat to places like this — even more than climate change.

Perks agreed, and said that people not knowing, caring, or ever spending time in nature was the issue. “We need people to go out in the woods,” he said. Soon after, he started picking up litter that dotted the property’s edge.

Not just the woods: Old trees you see every day

Perhaps just as surprising as the rich, unspoiled nature found at New Bedford’s northern edge are the massive and impressively old trees that dot the city’s landscape. You probably see some of them every day.

One of the most comprehensive efforts yet to appreciate and catalogue New Bedford’s historic street trees was produced by J.E. Ingoldsby, a New Bedford local and member of the American Society of Landscape Architects. In partnership with the James Arnold Mansion (now a local museum), Ingoldsby created a walking tour through the city’s West End, where the whaling-era elite lived in their mansions and planted arboretums.

Some of the trees on Ingoldsby’s tour might be the very same that Frederick Douglass saw when he arrived in New Bedford, describing himself as “gazing with wonder and admiration at the splendid churches, beautiful dwellings, and finely‐cultivated gardens.”

These, too, are centuries old, including an impressive purple-leaf beech, on Hawthorn Street, which Ingoldsby measured as having a trunk circumference of 211 inches — more than 17 feet around. There’s also a tulip magnolia, on Page Street, that he measured having a circumference of 264 inches — or 22 feet around. Japanese maples, sugar maples, goldenrains, grey birches, cucumber magnolias — the size, beauty, diversity, and splendor of trees in this old New Bedford neighborhood can astonish.

Ingoldsby’s project, supported by the New Bedford Cultural Council, was designed as a walking tour that departs from St. Luke’s Hospital to be used as a healthy escape for long-term patients. As a curiosity, Ingoldsby’s project also attempted to approximate the ages of some trees. However, his method of multiplying the trees’ diameter by an assumed growth rate is not an accurate way to estimate age, according to Perks and Danielson, the conservation agent and forest researcher.

And while Ingoldsby’s guide is terrific, Perks said, he had his own theories about the oldest trees to be found within the settled part of New Bedford. Cemeteries, he said, were the oldest preserved and maintained land in the city, and they hold examples of old trees that have fascinated him for years. That is where the tour headed next.

Near New Bedford High is the Oak Grove Cemetery, which has a northern and southern parcel. In the northern half are majestic examples of a European beech, and some abnormally large red cedars. But Perks believes that a large black oak (which might actually be a hybrid tree, known as a scarlet oak) in the southern half is likely the oldest tree here.

The black oak towers over the oldest graves in the cemetery — “All the names here are street names in the city,” Perks remarks — which in all likelihood makes the tree a bit older than the headstones that were planted in its shade. And the physical characteristics of the tree are not just big, but extraordinary. Thick, twisted limbs at least 20 feet in the air stretch out to provide shade. And while full grown black oaks typically achieve a trunk circumference of about 9 feet, Danielson measures this specimen at 15 feet around.

All this evidence together, Perks and Danielson agree, probably puts this tree in the ballpark of 200 years old — or about 20 years older than the establishment of New Bedford, in 1847.

But there’s one last tree to see, Perks said. And after gazing up at 10-ton monsters all day, this next tree will be a surprise.

The last stop on the tour is the Griffin Street Cemetery, which anyone driving on Route 18 has seen from their car window. The land sits just south of downtown, next to the Alfred J. Gomes Elementary School. Before the highway cut through, starting in the 1960s, the cemetery was bigger, and the neighborhood extended all the way down to the waterfront. Since “urban renewal,” however, there are fewer homes, and the presence of nearby industry and traffic has compacted much of the soil into a hard-baked floor.

Entering the cemetery, there aren’t any specimen trees to look up at. In fact, there aren’t many trees at all. Perks planted river birch, spruce, and a few other varieties — but they are taking a long time to establish themselves.

“That’s it!” Perks says proudly, and adds, “And it’d be very hard to prove me wrong.”

Before him is what appears to be a twisted little dwarf tree. It has multiple stems and is covered in green lichens. It is thick with branches and probably less than 15 feet tall. Many of its characteristics differentiate the tree from others in this cemetery, which was founded in 1802 and is the oldest in the city.

Perks says the tree is likely some variety of Hawthorn, a slow-growing and very durable species. He first became aware of it in 2015, when he was planting some of the other trees on the property. At the time, a resident came out to show Perks an old photograph. The picture showed the Hawthorn looking “indistinguishable from how it looks today,” Perks said — except all around it was devastation.

The picture, according to Perks and the person he met, showed the Griffin Street Cemetery after the great hurricane of 1938. At the time, it was the biggest storm to ever hit New Bedford. A surge of sea water wiped out most of the neighborhood, including uprooting trees and displacing most of the headstones in the graveyard. To this day, there may be up to 1,000 unmarked graves, according to the City of New Bedford.

The Hawthorn, however, survived. And because the slow-growing tree looked like it had reached full maturity by 1938, Perks thought it could predate the cemetery itself — which would make the tree upwards of 225 years old.

“I think this tree is a great way to get people thinking about where old trees could be,” Perks said. “It’s not just giant sequoias that are old,” but the hardy survivors of their environment, he said, that inspire the most reverence in him.

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 ¹ In 1865, Jonathan Hawes’ whaler, The Milo, was captured by the CSS Shenandoah, one of the most feared Confederate steamers then patrolling the seas. Hawes tried to convince the confederate captain that the war was over — which was true, as Lee had surrendered at Appomattox months before. Unsuccessful, Hawes and his ship were taken prisoner (a better fate than the other New Bedford whalers, the Euphrates and William Thompson, that the Shenandoah burned at sea).

Upon docking in San Francisco, Hawes was proven right. He returned to New Bedford and immediately began the Acushnet Saw Mill, which operated in the cedar swamp until his great-grandson sold the land to the state for preservation in 1971. Return to story ↑

Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org

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