A FRIEND DIES…MANY GATHER TO SEE S.J.'S OLDEST TREE CUT DOWN
– MERCURY NEWS, SPRING 2000

It looked like a crime scene. Yellow tape blocked the road. Live television. Gawkers. Souvenir seekers. And a witness with tears coursing down her cheeks.

Crowds gathered Wednesday to watch, and mourn, as workers began cutting down San Jose's oldest tree, which stood for 225 to 300 years at 590 N. 21st St.

''I know it has feelings,'' said Mary Swickrath, who stood crying as she watched limb after limb coming down. ''It is saying: Don't let me down. I have my foliage out now. I'm still here.''
In the background was the sound of a giant wood shredder making sawdust chips out of a witness to history.

A crew of six men from a private tree-removal service swung like trapeze artists, slashing off branches with chain saws, sending flakes of wood dust over the crowd like snow.
As hunks of the 98-foot sycamore collected around its 15-foot-wide base, people would dash in to grab souvenir pieces. Some took limbs that two people had to carry off.

''I'm going to put it in my back yard and put up a little marker so the kids will know we saved a piece of history,'' said Steve Pogue, a lawyer dressed in a suit who was loading a big chunk of limb into the trunk of his car. ''It will be a while before we get another one like this.'' He left the courthouse to visit the site.

''It's like driving to the funeral of a friend. There is very little in this town that is old, and I hate to lose what there is. I grew up here. This old tree and I have a little bit in common.''

Known as the Sentinel Tree because it was used by settlers in the 1840s as a landmark that they had arrived in San Jose, the tree has been maintained by the city since 1969. A plaque was erected in 1974.

Lightning apparently took off the top portion in the late 1800s, and brown-rot disease slowly ate away at the core over the years. Preservation arborists were called in to inspect the giant, but they recommended it come down, saying it was too far gone to save and a potential threat to public safety.
The sycamore is in the front yard of a private home owned by Frutoso and Suna Vasquez, who urged its cutting, fearful the tree would fall on their house. They also complained that the tree's presence made it difficult for them to sell their home, where they have lived since 1964.

''We've been lucky for 30 years it has never fallen down,'' said Suna Vasquez as workers swung above her roof, holding onto rigging 70 feet overhead. ''It's very sad to see this day because the tree has been part of my family's life. But its time has come.''

People came and went as the chain saws chewed. Many took snapshots.

''It's like a circus coming to town,'' said Mack Boone, who said he was a fifth cousin of Daniel Boone. He drove from his home in South San Jose to witness the tree's last days.

''This is something special to see,'' said Ruth Boone. She wondered why some entrepreneur wasn't selling pieces of the tree for $5 a slice.

Others brought their kids to see the passing of history, slice by slice.

''We've been coming all morning between carpooling,'' said Annie Collett, with her nephew, Don Wapenski,. ''This tree has been here for hundreds of years, before San Jose, before all these houses. We are in the middle of a historic moment.''

The work will take an additional three or four days. What will remain will be a few feet of trunk and a base limb. The city plans to harvest seeds from the living limb this fall when the surviving portion goes dormant for winter. Then the base will be cut away and the ground will revert to what it was some three centuries ago.

''I've looked at that tree for 20 years while I was doing dishes. I look at it outside my kitchen window,'' said Claudia Harris, a neighbor who took a cross-section to make a planter. She said her kids love to watch the animals that came to it: owls, hawks, squirrels, raccoons, birds and bees.
''It's a gorgeous tree and I'm very sad.''

by GEOFFREY TOMB, Mercury News Staff Writer