The Caddo Oak

Post Oak, Quercus stellata

In a small remnant of the East Cross Timbers region in Tarrant County, the post oak lives now in Arlington's Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve and is surrounded by development encroaching on all sides.

The Story

The Old Caddo Oak sits atop Kennedale Mountain Bluff in the East Cross Timbers ecoregion of North Central Texas. The bluff overlooks a section of the fertile Village Creek valley which contains evidence of human activity over the past 9,000 years. Village Creek feeds Lake Arlington and runs along the northwest boundary of Arlington to the creek’s confluence with the West Branch of the Trinity River. The creek plays a central role in the historical events that defined the post oak’s early life while witnessing and surviving the transition from rural to urban life has defined its later years.

Local archaeological excavations along the Village Creek valley have unearthed several artifacts discovered in and around Kennedale. These artifacts from the area date back almost 9,000 years and provide a clear picture of the most recent Caddo Nation presence and their expertise in food-gathering and hunting [2].

Prior to 1835, the Village Creek area was used as a campsite and gathering place during the bison hunting season. When the Old Caddo Oak was a sapling, the bluff could be used to track or sight herd movements or perhaps to communicate with groups on nearby bluffs. In 1830, Indians native to east and Southeastern United States flooded Texas after implementation of the Removal Act (Trail of Tears). Some found temporary refuge in the Village Creek area due to the abundant water supply and protection of the trees in the East Cross Timbers. By 1836, the Old Caddo Oak witnessed the population of the Village Creek valley grow rapidly. The United States government signed a treaty with the Caddo Nation in 1835 that forced them to abandon all their land in Louisiana and Arkansas territory. Most of the displaced ventured west into Texas. Being adept at farming, many Caddoans found the Village Creek area suitable and began establishing permanent settlements along the creek banks below the post oak. By the late 1830s, hundreds of acres of corn fields were established, hunters began supplying bison to the new villages, and trade with pioneer outposts to the south and east began.

At the same time, Texas independence launched a land rush as veterans of the Texas Revolution were awarded land patents for their service. In 1836, David Strickland was awarded a land patent for a large swath of land that stretched from east of the Old Caddo Oak to the west, clear across Village Creek (then known as Caddo Creek) into today’s Fort Worth. As of 1838, the old post oak overlooked a whole series of Indian villages that lay sprawling on either side of Village Creek, extending from about two to seven miles southward from its mouth at the Trinity River. The villages became a stronghold of refugees fleeing encroachments of European settlers from the east. The estimated population was 3,000 – probably unsustainable – and a sign of displaced people making the best of a difficult situation.

The presence of the large settlements deterred the new Texas landowners from claiming their property. In 1841, volunteer troops were sent to Village Creek to remove the villages. Among the casualties along the creek bank below the old post oak was Captain John B. Denton, namesake of Denton County. Although the first attempt was mostly unsuccessful, the villagers realized the hopelessness of their situation. The Old Caddo Oak witnessed the quick evacuation of over 200 lodges and the subsequent burning of the villages by Texas troops in July 1841. In September 1843, a Bird’s Fort Treaty between the Village Creek tribes and the Republic of Texas opened the region to settlement and removed the Indians to a reservation on the upper Brazos River.

An 1854 Tarrant County plat map indicates the first lands to be platted and sold to settlers were several just to the west of the preserve, straddling Village (Caddo) Creek. These first lands may have been an indication that the richest and most desirable parcels attractive to the first settlers were near the creek, with available water, and a possible sign these had already been used this way by the Caddo and associated tribes. The area right around the post oak was the center of farming/ranching activities on the site for the next one hundred years and the ranching buildings were still used here up until the early 1970s.

Less than a hundred feet west of the Old Caddo Oak, a well was discovered by Kennedale resident Wayne Winters on an exploration with Jim Frisinger in 2016. Winters was first alerted to the space where he found the well by a change in the forest canopy, indicating to him there may have been a homestead there at one time. Construction materials of the 8-foot-deep well (which is now dry) relied on fitted stone without masonry, an indication the well was at least 100 years old. The location is also close to remnant two-tracks and a cluster of agricultural buildings of which many show up in a 1942 aerial of the site.

Our knowledge of the Old Caddo Oak site has improved since the early 1950s, when John (Juan) Human Wilson II began buying up land to begin a ranching operation that would stretch all the way east to Little Road including the future preserve. He built a brick house on the preserve (between the bluff and today’s parking lot) for his ranch foreman and his family, first occupied by B.H. Tucker. Tucker had been a rodeo bulldogger champion and had performed at Madison Square Garden. This ranching operation either utilized or added buildings all adjacent to the post oak, including one designed to wash the Santa Gertrudis cattle introduced here by Wilson. While the manager’s house was demolished when the city of Arlington developed the preserve, foundations for a number of ranching-related buildings were left in place near the old oak.

There is an important back story to all of this. Arlington once had a well-known historic tree – The Witness Tree. According to “The Cast Iron Forest,” the 60-foot-tall post oak served as a “witness tree” for early surveyors in the 19th century. The tree, said to be 250 years old or more with a large, spreading crown, was moved by a shopping center developer in the winter of 1991-92 to a site a couple of hundred feet away. To the distress of city residents, early signs of regrowth the first year turned sour quickly and the tree died by the summer of 1992. It was cut down in 1993. Boy Scouts carved sections of it as mementos to be given away; a section of the trunk is all that’s left at a memorial pocket park behind the shopping center at the southwest corner of Cooper and I-20.

Fearing the last private owners would develop the last 58 acres into housing, the non-profit Trust for Public Land purchased the tract containing the preserve in 2004 and held it until the city of Arlington could hold a bond election and purchase the property. Voters approved a $13.6 million bond package to buy and develop the property as a low-impact park in 2005. The Southwest Nature Preserve opened to the public Oct. 19, 2013. The Old Caddo Oak was noticed in 2015 by Wes Cullwell, a Fort Worth arborist, while he was preparing to give a presentation on historic trees at a Friends of Southwest Nature Preserve (SWNP) meeting. During a hike in the through the preserve, he couldn’t help but notice the size of one particular post oak tree stood out from the other trees. As the Friends of Southwest Nature Preserve have found through recent years, the 58 acres continues to harbor a lot of secrets. New species are found all of the time that exist nowhere else in Tarrant County. So it is not surprising that Old Caddo Oak was overlooked. Although in a prominent location adjacent to an old two-track ranch road, the post oak is shrouded in greenbriars and amid a forest backdrop that helps it blend into the forest.

Jim Frisinger and other SWNP volunteers researched the tree for four years. They enlisted Arlington forester Jeremy Priest, who has measured the Old Caddo Oak and concluded in 2019 that the tree is likely 190-215 years old. That would mean the post oak was at least a sapling when the Caddo and Comanche roamed the neighborhood. In 2019, it became the first historic tree to be recognized by TxHTC in Tarrant County. A short video from the proclamation ceremony features arborist Wes Culwell discussing the history of the old post oak.

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Texas Historic Tree Coalition
Historic Tree Proclamation
The Caddo Oak Tree

WHEREAS, the post oak, known as The Caddo Oak Tree, grows on the site of the Southwest Nature Preserve in the city of Arlington, in Tarrant County, Texas; and

WHEREAS, The Caddo Oak Tree occupies a site that has been home to human beings for more than a thousand years; and

WHEREAS, the Caddo Indians and other agrarian tribes lived near the tree because of the site’s abundant springs and creeks, wild game, and suitable cropland; and

WHEREAS, The Caddo Oak Tree is a tangible connection to the rich history of Texas and the Southwest; and

WHEREAS, The Caddo Oak Tree is a living witness to the lives of Native Americans and the settlers that followed and made their homes in southwest Arlington; and

WHEREAS, The Caddo Oak Tree has withstood the test of time—surviving historic Texas storms, floods, and periods of drought; and

WHEREAS, the Friends of Southwest Nature Preserve’s stewardship has contributed to the tree’s continued growth, and Jim Frisinger has brought the history and legacy of this extraordinary tree to the attention of the community.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Mary Graves, President of the Texas Historic Tree Coalition, do hereby proclaim The Caddo Oak Tree, which shall be listed in our Historic Tree Registry, a living legend and a testament to our history.

ON THIS DAY, Saturday, October 26, 2019.

Mary Graves, President
Texas Historic Tree Coalition

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References:

Domke, J.G., “Centuries-old tree dedicated at Arlington preserve”, GreenSource DFW, Dallas, Texas, October 29, 2019.

Frazier, Donald, “The Battle of Village Creek: A Historical Overview”, Texas State Historical Association, April 5, 2022.

Middleton Sanders, Laurie and J.G. Domke, “Centuries Old Tree Discovered on Kennedale Mountain”, Kennedale News, Kennedale, Texas, December 31, 2022.

Texas Beyond History, “Caddo Voices: Twenty Years Without a Home, 1836-1859”, August 6, 2003.