A Long Climb

What Do You Think You're Looking At? #161

We’re not doing a building today. We’re doing this, outside Charlottesville, Virginia:

This is the form you have to fill out to visit the tree:

And here’s the tree on the map. It’s the dark green dot right at the top left, under the word “Earlysville”:

Here’s an entry from a life/family/homeschooling blog about a field trip to see the tree:

I think the best part of our tree adventures is the searching for them.  This time around we knew that this giant oak was in the vicinity of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport, close enough that it had to be protected during the relocation of a nearby highway.  So we drove in and around the airport and then started circling wider.  We joked about the funny ways we could ask people for help finding it (strangely enough, some might actually find a van full of children and their parents searching for a tree a bit odd.  They might not understand what we are talking about when we say, “you know, the Earlysville oak?  It’s one of the Remarkable Trees of Virginia!)  Thankfully, it did not take long before we spotted the giant white oak sitting on a hill, airplanes flying overhead.  I didn’t have to hang out the passenger window to question an innocent bystander a single time.  That’s not always the case.

It’s a bit of a celebrity, being huge and very old:

Albemarle County claims the distinction of having the second largest white oak tree in Virginia. It is on property belonging to the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport.

Known locally as the Earlysville White Oak, this historic tree is 75 feet tall with an 85-foot crown and is believed to be between 250 and 300 years old. It is included in Virginia Tech’s Virginia Big Tree database and the Remarkable Trees of Virginia Program.

I love this kind of thing. Obviously this isn’t a building, but it is a local landmark that distinguishes this specific place from other places. That’s what historic architecture does: it gives you that sense that you’re here.

I found out about this tree from a Virginia Facebook group I follow, and appropriately, I’ll end with this screenshot from a recent Facebook thread about it. This is how truly massive it is.

Good localism.

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Related Reading:

Land Your Plane for Pizza

Under the Street

What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #14

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