As you drive through Ponca State Park along the Missouri River, you might find a scenic turnout off one of the roads meandering through the middle of the park. If you stop by that turnout and walk down a narrow trail, you are met with a real treat.

It is the gnarled old bur oak tree that has been core dated to the year 1644. That’s 160 years before the Lewis and Clark expedition passed up the Missouri River. It’s 217 years before the beginning of the Civil War and 223 years before Nebraska became a state. This 380-year-old rough, scraggly bur oak has stood witness to history.

Trees on our farm

As I was checking fences earlier this fall, and walking amid some old cottonwoods on our farm, it reminded me of the history they have witnessed, just like that oak at Ponca State Park. On the north side of our farmstead, there are several Eastern cottonwood trees towering like giant sentinels above that are about 130 years old. They rise about 80 feet above our house and barns, with cragged bark and gigantic, solid trunks. In the summer, as long as I can remember, their leaves rustle with the changing of the wind to the northwest. In the fall, those same leaves turn bright golden yellow, letting us know of the changing of the seasons. And in the winter, their massive trunks are buried in snowdrifts that can be up to 20 feet deep.

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Those trees were there a couple of decades before my grandfather purchased this farm and moved his new bride here in 1916. I don’t know if they were planted by the original homesteaders of the farm or if they seeded naturally from the Bow Creek bottom land nearby. But here they are, still standing more than a century later.

Storytellers

Oh, the stories they could tell and the history on our farm that they have witnessed.

Many of the old farmsteads around our state that remain have these old trees in the background. They may be part of an old windbreak, or they may have been planted by those early settlers in our families who wanted to make life on their new farms more livable by planting trees. But no matter, they have become a part of the family and mainstays on our farms, living witnesses to generations of farmers on these places.

Some of these old trees may be eligible for registry in the Nebraska Heritage Tree program, especially if they have some special historical significance. But whether they are recognized in a registry or not, it’s important for us to recognize their stature and presence as a part of our family and farm history.