Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 209, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1919 — Lone Tree of 1849. [ARTICLE]

Lone Tree of 1849.

There was an Immense cottonwood, four feet thick and very tall, which stood in Nebraska almost in the center of the continent, half-way between New York and San Francisco, which was within one mile of that center. Under its branches rested thousands of forty-niners en route to the Eldorado of the Pacific coast. It was the best known camping ground on the old California trail. From 1849, when the gold seekers rushed across the great plains down to the completion of the Union Pacific railway, the great tree was a guidepost to the wagon trains going West. After the railway was completed there was no further use for the old tree and It eventually rotted away and died. In 1910 a monument was erected on the spot that the tree had occupied. It represents the trunk of a giant cottonwood and bears this inscription: “On this spot stood the original Lone Tree on the old California trail.”