The Great Oak at Double Beach is a Stumper

As it turns out, the fate of the Great Oak at Double Beach is one of the great mysteries of Branford. I looked in a number of sources and asked several local experts, but came up dry! Here's what I can tell you about what we discovered.

In 1934, the Great Oak was listed in Trees of Note in Connecticut, compiled by Katharine Matthies. In it, she mentions that the huge tree was standing in 1640, when Branford was settled, and was used as a council tree. It's likely it was already a significant tree in the 1600s, for it to have been a local landmark, so by the 1930s, it was certainly over 300 years old.

According to Jane Bouley of the Branford Historical Society, the tree is frequently depicted in photographs and postcards from the early 1900s. While she is also aware that the Great Oak survived the hurricane of '38, she's been unable to track down a solid date for when the tree fell. According to Jane's research, and some confirmation of my own using the historical city directories at the , the Double Beach House was rebuilt after the fire in 1930, and it stood at the same address during the 1950s. There is a gap in listing for the Double Beach House after the fire, however, the property is not included in the city directories from 1930 through 1946. (Several buildings were rebuilt after the fire, and despite not being listed in the city directories, Double Beach House was open in some capacity from 1932 through 1953.) Might the tree have come down during that period? Or could it still have stood when the Double Beach Surf and Pool Club opened on the property in 1964?For that matter, was it still around in 1980 when Echlin Manufacturing built on the building that now stands on the site, currently occupied by ?

I thought I'd go explore the grounds at Connecticut Hospice to see if there was any trace of the tree left. With permission from the staff, I took my camera and wandered, looking for landmarks that might have helped me find an ancient stump or root system. But sadly, all traces of the tree are now gone, which suggests that it is either covered up by the structures now built on the site, or that it's been long enough for traces of the tree to have vanished. (I believe it to be the latter. One of the boulders on site may be the same one that appeared in photos from the early 1900s, which means that the remains of the tree are truly gone, not just hidden. If you compare the images, let me know if you think I found the same rock!)

We went back to the books, looking for any additional evidence that would narrow the field. Barbara Cangiano at the Blackstone found a book of arial photography from 1965 that shows Double Beach from above. Though the section showing Double Beach is very small, it seems clear that there are no major trees on the property at that point. In fact, the yard seems quite bare of any trees at all. If that interpretation of the arial photography is accurate, we've narrowed down the date a bit: the Great Oak fell sometime between 1938 and 1965.

Could the fall of the tree have been covered in the New Haven Register or the Hartford Courant? It's possible, but sadly, there is no easy to use index for either of those two periodicals during the relevant years. The Courant has years of historical papers available electronically, but all of those are prior to 1922; the modern papers begin with 1992. The Register also has years of back issues available in their online databases, but only after 1988. To track down the tree's fall, if it was even featured in one of these periodicals, a reader would have to scan papers for a nearly 30 year period. Could a solution be found this way? It's possible -- but it would require many hours with a microfilm machine with no guarantee that such an article even exists.

With historical written record failing me, I thought I would attempt to track down an oral record, and I contacted Eunice Lasala of the Branford Garden Club. Sadly, she believed the person most likely to know would have been former Branford Tree Warden Dominick Guarnero. Mr. Guarnero owned a landscape and flower growing business, and he served as Branford's Tree Warden for 40 years. He passed away in 2001.

So dear readers, I'm afraid this question is a stumper! We have narrowed down the possible dates for when the Great Oak finally fell to a span of under 30 years, but for now, that may be the best we researchers who worked on the project can do. If an answer presents itself, you can be sure that I'll revisit it in an upcoming Patch column! And should any of you hear the story of how the mighty Great Oak of Double Beach met its end, I hope you'll share that here.