The tree now stands majestically a little off center, dividing the traffic on Texas Avenue, the main street in Baytown, Texas. Its magnificent horizontal branches spread like a ceiling almost across the entire thoroughfare. Its trunk is short and fat and its thick leathery leaves stay on the branches each year until new ones arrive. The lower limbs, that once almost swept the ground, have been knocked off or pruned to allow a procession of larger and larger trucks to pass. A 30 foot diameter circle of concrete curb now surrounds the tree’s four foot thick trunk to help retain the 400 gallons of rainwater and moisture that it needs to absorb each day, and under the 130 foot wide street, its labyrinth of slumbering roots are fed an exacting diet of nutrients to the tree doctor’s orders. Its base is lovingly beautified by a group of Baytown ladies. Its foliage is sometimes brightened at Christmas time with hundreds of lights by the Baytown Lion Club, and its future maintenance is generously guaranteed in the will of its former owner. It is a tree genuinely alive in appearance and storied tradition, but its legacy was not always so assured. When the townsite of Goose Creek was laid out by Ross Sterling and Price Pruett in 1917, the tree was on the outskirts of town and Texas Avenue ended at the tree. But in 1919, when Sterling had his fledging refinery going, a road was needed past the tree to the refinery. Engineers from Goose Creek Realty Company and Harris County were running the line for the new road west of the tree on Texas Avenue and plans called for the tree to be cut down. It was Sterling, who was not until later elected Governor of Texas, who saved the tree from the ax. “ It required many years for nature to produce such a beautiful thing like that and we must save it.’’, he said. He instructed the engineers to’’ bend the road slightly to the South. ‘’ Price Pruett , who owned that land where the tree stood, and who had given the right-of way for the road, made an agreement with Harris County Commissioner Charlie Massey that the tree would be allowed to stand until it died of natural causes. The new road to the refinery curved a little south of the tree and the Pruett livestock still grazed to its edges. The Pruett children still played beneath the tree’s heavy branches and cooled their feet on hot summer days in a small stream that ran just east of the tree and was covered on Texas Avenue with a bridge. To the west and farther away the land unrolled into Goose Creek stream. It seems that all trails went by the “Big Oak’’. It was a rendezvous point for horse riders, picnickers, courting couples, and workers from town who took their sack lunches each noon to eat in its shade. Holiday parades formed there, and still do, at its base travelers used it as a mileage measurement point. As automobiles came more into use, there was talk of how dangerous the tree was with no guard rails or lights to warn drivers. On October 26, 1929 Marvin Epperson, a refinery worker, was killed when the jitney, or taxi, he was riding in to work the midnight shift at the refinery, hit the tree. He is the only casualty on record caused by the tree. At the tip of its northernmost branches, where Culpepper Furniture Company now stands, Wesley Woods’ Home Lumber Company (now Woods Home Center) stood for 22 years. Woods used “By the Big Oak Tree’’ on his letterhead and took complete responsibility for the welfare of the tree. The tree was much larger then and Woods remembers that traffic was still routed on the south side in l935, but sometimes trucks went on the north side to avoid low hanging limbs. In l950 the second big crises in the life of the tree arose. Not only was it being called a traffic hazard, but the tree seemed to be sick and dying. Price Pruett’s son R. H. (Red) Pruett, was now a Baytown City Councilman, but was out of the city the night the council voted to cut down the tree. On his return, Pruett called a special Council meeting to announce that he had talked to a tree expert who said that the tree could be saved. Because the cure was expensive, and the city did not have the money for it, Pruett paid the cost, in memory of his father and Charlie Massey. The tree experts said one of the problems with the tree was the hundreds of posters that had been nailed to the trunk. Insects were attracted to the nail holes and were under the tree’s bark. When pieces of the bark were removed, quarts of termites fell out. Portions of the trunk were scraped, holes filled in and medicated and dead limbs pruned. A crew dug out all the rock and shell around the tree’s roots and a dozen yards of topsoil and fertilizer were hauled in and put around the base. The concrete curb was installed to allow the rainwater to run in. All of this cost Pruett over $1000.00. Over the years the Texas Highway Department has made many suggestions to the City of Baytown to increase the flow of traffic, and business, on Texas Avenue, most of which involved cutting down the tree. After many rejections, the Texas Highway Department warns any new engineers to :’’watch out for that damned oak tree in Baytown.’’ The last proposal to cut down the tree, because it was a traffic hazard, was made in l972. Pruett argued that a driver who cannot see a four foot tree in diameter probably couldn’t see a pedestrian either, and had no business driving an automobile. The proposal was rejected. Texas Avenue was 70 feet wide in l9l7. After it was extended to Market Street, it was made 100 feet wide at the “Big Oak’’. Pruett then paid for the addition of 15 feet on each side of the tree to a distance of 75 feet east of the tree, making the street a total of 130 feet wide at the tree. With the additional street width, the curbing, and the directional signs, the traffic hazard argument has almost disappeared and Pruett has provided for continued care of the tree in his will. “Baytown’s Big Oak’’ lives and thrives — and stirs memories for Baytonians of all ages across the years and across the continents.
Once upon a time, between 200 and thousand years ago, a funny looking acorn dropped to the ground and took rest on the then uncharted coastal plains just a few miles off Galveston Bay and about 35 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. The seedling grew to be a tremendous tree, a Live Oak (quercus virginiana), native to the area and was already a landmark when Price Pruett moved his family to the 293 acres surrounding it in 1902.
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Copyrighted 1976 Nell’s Frame Shop Baytown, Texas