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Follow TURFCintra's toll road destroys 230 yr old oak
Note it was TxDOT's threats to Caldwell County Commissioners to pull funding for other road projects that got them to reverse themselves on a resolution to prohibit the destruction of this historic landmark. This is standard operating procedure with TxDOT...when you hit a roadblock of public resistance, hit the locals with a ton of bricks to get your way. Why did TxDOT bully local elected officials? To benefit the toll revenues of a private company. If they were building SH 130 as a FREEway, not a toll road, there would be no need for the continuous frontage roads. The road could have been built to accommodate and preserve this historic oak tree. More proof that the footprint of toll roads are bigger than needed (to fulfill the loop-hole ridden state law that requires a free alternative), and results in the loss of not only more private land, but also historic landmarks.
Link to article here.
Texas 130 takes toll on iconic oak
Ben Wear, Getting There
Updated: 5:18 a.m. Monday, June 7, 2010
Published: 11:05 p.m. Sunday, June 6, 2010
Finally, a tree preservation story that doesn't involve Austin. Or, actually in this case, a story about attempted tree preservation.
More on that in a minute.
The huge live oak we're discussing sprouted in Caldwell County, about three miles southwest of what is now downtown Lockhart, somewhere between 1660 and 1780. Much later, sometime after Lockhart itself sprouted, the tree came to be known locally as "the Big Tree" and, more commonly, "Hangman's Tree." No one I could locate, however, seems to know the origin of that second, disturbing name.
Thankfully, to the degree that the tree generated any sentiment in and around Lockhart these past few months, it apparently had nothing to do with that name or historic incidents associated with it. Instead, the affection for the tree seemed to arise from its sheer size, its once prominent place on a ridge and, well, affection itself.
Locals say the oak, at the remote corner of County Roads 217 and 218, had long been a prominent parking spot for teens. In other words, any recent historical significance of the tree was of a very personal kind.
You'll notice I'm writing in the past tense. Hangman's Tree went to its maker bright and early on the morning of May 22, when contractors working on the extension of the Texas 130 tollway to Seguin sawed it off a couple of inches above ground level. All that's left now is a low stump roughly 6 feet long by 4 feet wide. The tree's circumference was said to be 14 feet. I didn't have a tape measure when I visited.
The slaying occurred after Caldwell County commissioners dropped a last-minute attempt to save the tree. The problem, they said, was money. Specifically, $487,000 of the Texas Department of Transportation's money.
This all happened because of Texas 130, of course. The weird part, however, is that the edge of the actual tollway is about 150 feet north of the tree. What felled the tree was actually a design decision, approved in 2006 by federal regulators, to straighten out a wiggle in County Road 218 so that a frontage road for the tollway would meet 218 at a 90-degree angle. The Big Tree was situated in that wiggle.
Roads were once built around large trees.
The 40-mile extension of Texas 130 from Mustang Ridge to Seguin is being built by a private consortium led by Spanish toll road builder Cintra. The company's engineers, working from that broad-brush TxDOT design from 2006, wrote the detailed plans that required taking out the tree. Officials with TxDOT say no one in Caldwell County during the environmental study in 2005 and 2006, which included four public meetings, indicated that this particular tree was anything special.
When tollway construction reached the area of the oak, and dirt began to fly, local folks realized what was about to happen, and the commissioners stepped in. TxDOT, it turns out, has about $7.9 million left from a Cintra concession payment that it could spend on this or other needs. But if it had used $487,000 of the money to spare a tree (about half of it for redesign of the frontage road and County Road 218 in that vicinity and an impressive $45,000 for "traffic control"), that money would not have been available for other Caldwell County road projects.
The commissioners, who had passed a resolution April 12 calling for the tree to be saved, blinked and on May 10 rescinded that action via another resolution. The Big Tree became firewood and sawdust less than two weeks later. Another large oak a few hundred feet north, located in a farmhouse's front yard and thus less suitable for romance, was preserved.
Caldwell County high schoolers, unless a tollway puts them in the mood, will have to find another venue.