Not All Texans Are
Like George W. Bush

Izora Firelands, Horticulture Editor

Seventy miles west of Houston on Interstate 10 you find the small town of Columbus on the west bank of the Colorado River. Founded in 1821 on the site of the legendary Indian village known to the Spaniards as Montezuma, the town today lives on faded dreams of glory—and traffic along the interstate highway.

Drive its sleepy streets and you’re struck by two things: one, the large number of well-preserved nineteenth century houses and near-mansions, and two, the forest of huge, old live oaks which shade most of the town.

Over on the west side, far from the mansions and most of the other trees, you come across an ancient entity. Given its own lot, unnamed (the sign modestly refers to it only as "our oak"), its long, gnarled and sagging limbs supported by several iron pillars, there stands a tree of unknown but great antiquity. Dendrologists will say only that it is more than five hundred years old.

A mere sapling, of course, compared to the much older sequoias far to the west. While those giants have their own powerful presence and grandeur, they hardly look their age. The Columbus oak wears its age visibly, proudly, serenely. Even from a distance you know you are in the presence of magnificence. As you draw near you see its age in the corruscated, ill-formed bark. Yet still it thrives. Look up and you see that all its arthritic branches have healthy showings of leaves.

Touch it and you touch a world when Magellan was a boy, a world when America was little more than a word scrawled on a poorly drawn map.

The tree is a tourist attraction only to those who somehow know it’s there. Columbus doesn’t brag about it, and there are no signs on the interstate to entice the curious traveler. No admission fee. It’s just keeps on keeping on, on its own lot with houses on both sides and to the rear. If you search in downtown a quarter of a mile to the east you may find a post card with a picture of the tree on it. Otherwise, nothing special.