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A Brief History of Wake Forest’s Trees In the early 1700s, botanist and explorer John Lawson passed through the piedmont of North Carolina, including the Falls of the Neuse River, and described a landscape far different from today’s: “However, we all got safe to the North-Shore, which is but poor, white, sandy Land, and bears no Timber, but small shrubby Oaks. We went about 10 Miles, and sat down at the Falls of a large Creek. …I take this to be the Falls of Neus-Creek….We lay here all Night….The next Morning we set out early….We went, this day, above 30 Miles, over a very level country, and most Pine Land.”
-J ohn L awson , 1709
Because pine trees cannot grow in the shade of their ancestors, it is likely that the pine forests around this area were dependent on grazing herbivores and frequent fires that prevented hardwood forests from developing. These two disturbing forces also would have reduced the underbrush enough to allow the explorers to cover 30 miles per day.
Over the next century, trees had become a defining feature of this area, and by 1820, this area was known as “Wake Forest Township”. In the late 1800s, trees were planted along town streets. Historical maps show trees in the campus that is now the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and some of these trees still survive. The 1909 Sanborn fire insurance maps show two large lumber planing mills on between South White Street and the railroad, indicating the economic impor- tance of local timber harvesting. Aerial photos from 1938 reveal Wake Forest as a town surrounded by farms and forests, with shade trees planted in yards and along Main Street. The Wake Forest Tree Board was es- tablished in 1978. That same year, the first recorded street tree inventory was conducted. Wake Forest was one of the first communities in North Carolina to be named a “Tree City USA” in 1979. In
The area around Wake Forest once contained a mix of pine forests and prairies grazed by bison and elk, as documented by explorer John Lawson in 1709.
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