This Old Tree

There's a huge, spreading, 350 yr old plus white oak in McMinnville, Tennessee with a legend. It was known to the early pioneers, and it's now a state landmark tree. Listen to its story told by Warre…

Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king of Uruk, threatens to cut down the sacred Cedar Forest and claim its wood for his people. First, he must kill the terrifying guardian of the forest, Humbaba. Can he do it…

King James II of England threatened to revoke the precious Charter of Connecticut in 1687, and sent one of his men to retrieve it. That meant an end to the colony's limited democracy and independence…

Picture yourself in Harlem in New York City, and it’s the 1920’s. There’s a cultural awakening going on - there’s jazz and dance, theater and literature, big celebrities and lots of new talent lookin…

This a special episode of This Old Tree, the show that features heritage trees and the human stories behind them. This time, listeners tell their own tree stories! From Vermont to California to Hawai…

Luna is a 200 ft tall redwood tree that towers on a ridge deep within a privately owned forest in northern California. You may remember Julia Butterfly Hill's remarkable 2-year "tree sit" in the 1990…

A big, old, thorny honeylocust tree on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago has a place within the history of modernist architecture and landscape design. How so? Professor a…

The Survivor Tree is a well known tree planted at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City that was rescued from the rubble at the World Trade Center site after the terrorist attacks. It has bec…

Concord, Massachusetts, 1856. Four men cut down a huge, seemingly healthy American elm tree using block and tackle, and ropes drawn by a horse. The graceful tree towered above a house whose owners he…

Why did Thomas Edison plant a banyan tree sapling at his winter residence in 1926? You guessed it, there was an experiment involved. Native to India, it is now a massive, beloved tree at the Edison &…

The Betsey Williams Sycamore is the most famous tree in Rhode Island. Its huge girth and spreading branches have been photographed, climbed on, and loved by generations of visitors to historic Roger …

Join host Doug Still - each show features heritage trees and the human stories behind them. 

Old trees are awe inspiring links to the past that fire our historical imagination. Each week, he’ll interv…