Crews cut down giant chestnut tree Puyallup neighbors say was more than 100 years old
It wasn’t just a tree to Jon Palo. It was a piece of Puyallup Valley history.
He and other neighbors near Stewart Elementary School were alarmed Thursday when crews with heavy equipment felled the giant chestnut tree on the school’s playground.
The 73-year-old said he’s lived across from the school for more than 40 years. A framed photo of the tree, taken by neighbor Dianna Hamilton in the ‘80s, hangs in his home.
Palo said he thought the tree was planted in the late 1890s or early 1900s, and that it was close to 100 feet tall and 5 feet in diameter.
“Look how tall that man is over there,” Hamilton said Thursday, pointing to crews working near the overturned tree. “It’s up to his shoulders.”
Asked about the size, age and origins of the tree, Puyallup School District spokesperson Sarah Gillispie said it was an American Chestnut tree with a diameter of 3 feet, 2 inches, but didn’t have further information.
The district said in a statement Friday that the tree had to go for student health reasons.
“After following appropriate tree removal protocols with the city, the district removed the tree from the playground area due to it being a prolonged health risk to students with life-threatening allergies to tree nuts,” the statement said.
The statement went on to say, in part: “Along with the Stewart community, we are saddened to have made the decision to remove the tree, but the health and safety of students was our priority in this instance. Over the years, several students have displayed symptoms related to their life-threatening allergies that this tree imposed. Our decision was made in an effort to prevent a severe, catastrophic incident.”
Asked who made the decision, Gillispie said via email: “Our Health Services department made the recommendation to the Assistant Superintendent of Operations. The Superintendent’s Office then evaluated this recommendation against the risk it posed to students and previous, albeit minor, incidents.”
Locals would gather the chestnuts when they fell each year, neighbors said.
“It was the most beautiful tree in the neighborhood, by far,” resident Paul Russell Fridlund told The News Tribune.
Greenery, Hamilton said, makes a neighborhood.
“I thought they were just going to trim it up when they got here,” Hamilton said.
Asked what will replace the tree, Gillispie wrote: “There are preliminary discussions about replacing the tree with several non-allergy species, later in the growing season; however, that plan has yet to be finalized.”
History of the Stewart Elementary School chestnut tree
Palo said Thursday that he thought the tree was part of a national historic site related to the old school building, and he wondered whether the tree should have been federally protected.
The city of Puyallup issued the permit for the tree’s removal.
The school district’s statement said: “The city confirmed that the tree was not currently listed on the city’s historic tree list, but it was a tree in the city’s past heritage tree registry due to its age and size.”
Palo and other neighbors believe the tree is one of two chestnut trees left standing in the city that Ezra Meeker (the city’s first mayor) and resident J.P. Stewart (the school’s namesake) had planted.
Palo said a blight in the 1920s or ‘30s took out many of the trees and that the Stewart Elementary tree and one at the interchange of state Route 167 and state Route 512 survived.
Holly O’Brien, curator at the Puyallup Historical Society at Meeker Mansion, couldn’t immediately find specifics on the Stewart Elementary tree.
“I pulled the historic tree inventory completed by the City of Puyallup,” she said via email Thursday. “I cannot find any chestnut trees on the list near the school. The records don’t reflect any connection between Ezra Meeker and the chestnut tree at the school. If anyone has any information about his connection with the tree, we would be happy to add it to our records.”
Meeker, she said, named streets for the trees that were planted there when he platted the city south of the railroad tracks. Third Street used to be Cherry Street, for example, though they “were changed to numbers during Meeker’s lifetime and by that time many of the trees that had been planted along those streets had already been removed,” O’Brien wrote.
Stewart platted north of the tracks.
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O’Brien had more information about the chestnut tree at the interchange of SR 512 and SR 167. It’s called the Carson Chestnut.
“... the historic tree inventory lists it as being planted before 1861 on the donation land claim of John Carson who ran a ferry across the river near that site,” O’Brien wrote.
She said he and his wife, Emma, planted the tree. Emma, one of the early school teachers in the area, had bright red hair that stuck to the logs of her school building.
Palo said the state Department of Transportation lost a lawsuit in the ‘70s or so and had to build the roadway around the Carson Chestnut instead of cutting it down.
Asked to confirm that, state Department of Transportation spokesperson Kris Olsen said researching a 50-year-old lawsuit would take some time.
Olsen did find Puyallup’s Heritage Tree brochure, which said the Carson tree “was spared removal in 1972 when WSDOT, after community outcry over proposed removal of the tree for the on-ramp lane, saved the tree. The tree now has a recognition sign near it, installed in 2007 as part of an Eagle Scout project.”
In 1972, Olsen noted, the agency was the Washington State Department of Highways. WSDOT was created in 1977.
“The Spanish chestnut tree is still located near the on-ramp from northbound North Meridian Avenue to northbound SR 167,” Olsen said via email. “The improvements planned for SR 167 and the existing interchange at North Meridian will not affect the tree and it will be protected during construction.”
‘Students loved the tree’
Heavy equipment whirred in the background, taking care of what was left of the Stewart Elementary tree, as Palo and others spoke with The News Tribune on Thursday.
“To have this one cut down is a travesty as far as I’m concerned, and my neighbors also,” Palo said. “... It upsets me very much. Other than that, I don’t know what to say.”
A longtime employee, Sue King Snoke, wrote The News Tribune about her memories of the tree.
She said she recently retired from working at Stewart for 37 years.
Snoke remembered a plaque put under the tree for a 100-year celebration at Stewart but said over the years kids broke it off the stand.
Before they built the current school, she said, there was talk of getting rid of the tree. She said she was on the building committee at the time and threatened to chain herself to the tree if they tried. Everyone laughed, she said, then realized she was serious.
Snoke said she was “mad” and “heartbroken” when she saw what happened Thursday.
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She said she spent her first four years at Stewart working on the playground.
“The students loved the tree. They would try to climb it, but they were always told to stop,” she said. “They would fill their pockets with the nuts.”
They were always upset, Snoke said, when they had to throw the chestnuts out before going inside.
Now, she said, there are no trees on the playground.
