We Need Shade Trees – Part One

With the Willow down in Mill Brook Meadows, it is a good moment to revisit Rockport’s need for shade , the Town’s love of trees.

[Granite Street] Pigeon Cove looking toward Rockport. Originally published in Rockport Timeline by Leslie D, Bartlett 2001. Photo courtesy of the SBHS.

In the early 1870s, walking the shore from Pigeon Cove to Land’s End was a feature attraction for tourists and visitors. And ‘alongshore’ meant scrambling over rocks, not a tree limb to rest beneath. Trees were needed as shade for relief from the sun, and for protection from unabatted winter storms. As land lots were established and sold off in the major developments of Phillips Avenue and the Headlands, newly planted trees urbanized and defined property lines, and contributed privacy.

The call went out for tree seedlings:

Shade Trees.—Our town is very much in need of shade trees. If our streets were lined with them, they would very much brighten the beauty of the town, and make many parts lovely and attractive that now are not so…and our real estate would be improved in value. Can’t we do this by a form of associated labor? Suppose we form a Rockport Tree Association, and each member binds himself to perform certain tree imrpovement…It needs not so much labor, but only a concert of labor. RG March 1875

Elm Trees.— It is very pleasant to see, that certain men cultivate to the best advantage, the habit of using their public power for public improvement as well as for the legitimate business for which they were selected. In 1858 the selectmen planted the beautiful tree on Dock Square, in which we all take so much pride today. It has a history, being a native seedling growing on land owned by Mr. Ebenezer Poole, taken up and planted in the yard of his homestead in 1830, until purchased by the selectmen, from which time, it and the Town Pump have been on the best of terms. Mutual friendship has been given by the former in its everlasting will, and by the latter in its towering shade.  RG May 1886

Original Elm Tree at Dock Square, Rockport. (Rockport Timeline by Leslie D, Bartlett 2001. Photo courtesy of the SBHS.)

We forget that the Willow at Mill Brook Park was always on borrowed time:

Once willows lined the road along Back Beach. The road was built over the beach, and over time, the ocean reclaimed its roots,and the willows are but memories on the wave.