Famous Trees of Texas - Our State Tree
In 1919, the Texas Legislature designated the pecan as the state tree. The pecan is one of the most widely distributed trees in Texas. It is a remarkably long-lived tree and fossil remains show that pecan trees were likely here prior to the arrival of people.
These trees played a major role in the history of both Texas and Pecan trees.
Goodnight-Loving Pecan
Underneath the Goodnight-Loving Pecan in 1866, an enterprising young cattleman named Charles Goodnight forged a partnership with prominent rancher Oliver Loving to blaze a new cattle trail eventually spanning some 2,000 miles.
Following the Civil War, most Texas cowmen drove their herds north or east along existing trails, flooding markets in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. Goodnight and Loving had more ambitious plans to drive thousands of cattle to New Mexico and on to Colorado and Wyoming. Demand for beef from settlers, soldiers stationed at military outposts and thousands of Navajos recently interned near Fort Sumner, NM was strong.
Cattle were in Texas, but the need for food was farther west. To get there, though, it meant skirting Comanche lands and driving cattle across difficult, waterless terrain. Goodnight and Loving left Fort Belknap, Texas on June 6, 1866, with 2,000 head of cattle and 18 armed men. After a long and treacherous drive, they arrived, dusty, dehydrated and 400 head of cattle fewer; their combined skills succeeded and the Goodnight-Loving Trail was born.
Along the trail a year later, Loving was attacked by Comanches and died from his wounds. Over the following years, the Goodnight-Loving Trail became one of the most heavily traveled in the Southwest. Goodnight completed a few more drives himself before consolidating his ranching operations near Palo Duro Canyon. Learn more about the Goodnight-Loving Pecan here.
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Governor Hogg Pecan
On the evening of Texas Independence Day, March 2, 1906, Texas’ former Governor James Stephen Hogg and his daughter Ima were visiting the home of his law partner, Frank Jones, of Houston. During their conversation, the Governor told Jones and his daughter that when he died, he wanted no monument of stone, but “Let my children plant at the head of my grave a pecan tree and at my feet an old-fashioned walnut tree. And when these trees shall bear, let the pecans and the walnuts be given out among the plain people so that they may plant them and make Texas a land of trees.”
Late the next morning, Governor Hogg died quietly in his sleep. Shortly after his burial in Austin’s Oakwood Cemetery, the first of Governor Hogg’s wishes was carried out by the president of the State Horticultural Society. The pecan had long been a popular tree in Texas, and in 1919 it was officially designated the state tree of Texas by an Act of the State Legislature.
In a special Arbor Day observance at Oakwood Cemetery sponsored by Texas A&M Forest Service and the Texas Forestry Association, in 1969, Hogg’s last wishes were perpetuated. The Russell pecan and the black walnut had died, and the trees were replaced with a Choctaw pecan, known as the Governor Gogg Pecan and a Thomas black walnut.
Read more about the Governor Hogg Pecan here.
Castroville Pecan
The uniquely shaped Castroville Pecan tree, on the west bank of the Medina River about twenty-five miles from San Antonio, marked the approximate location where Henry Castro and a small group of colonists camped on September 3, 1844. Eight days later Bishop John M. Odin, the first Catholic Bishop of Texas, said Mass in its shade.
Castroville was the first permanent colony to be established between San Antonio and the Rio Grande. Legal entanglements and delayed payments for services rendered as impresario of the colonies he established eventually cost Castro a personal fortune in excess of $100,000 and much of the land he received under his colonization contract. During the War Between the States, he returned to France, where he hoped to raise additional funds.
His journey took him only as far as Monterrey, Mexico, where he died on November 3, 1865. Castro's contribution to the settlement of Texas was recognized in 1876 when the Legislature created and named in his honor a county in the northwest part of the state.
The tree died after an unusually cold winter in 1985 but has been replaced by a young sapling raised from pecans from the original tree. Click here to learn more about the Castroville Pecan.
Grigsby Pecan
This majestic Grigsby Pecan once marked the homesite and grave of the founder of a pioneer settlement known as Grigsby’s Bluff. The tree also was the point of origin from which the townsite of Port Neches was surveyed, in 1902.
Joseph Grigsby’s deep and active interest in the development of Jefferson County is evidenced by his partnership with four other landowners, one of whom was Captain Henry Millard. Each gave fifty acres of land out of which the town of Beaumont was surveyed in 1837. Grigsby’s homesite and other adjoining property were acquired in 1902 by the Central Asphalt and Refining Company, which laid out and named the town of Port Neches. Their main office is believed to have been at the location of the Grigsby home.
It was about this time that the five Grigsby graves that lay under this tree were moved to another location, one which to this day remains a mystery. A storm destroyed this tree after the first edition of Famous Trees of Texas went to press in 1969. Read more about the Grigsby Pecan here.
Houston Pecan
The house Sam Houston loved best was the one in Huntsville in which he resided for nearly twenty years. In the south corner of the spacious yard only the stump remains of this native pecan which grew into a beautiful tree of immense proportions, later known as the Houston Pecan.
This magnificent tree died in 1974. According to Houston’s granddaughter, Mrs. Jennie Morrow Decker of Houston, her grandfather planted the tree in 1847. While returning from a trip, he needed a buggy whip to spur his lazy horse. Having none, he stopped beside the road and pulled up a small pecan sapling, which served his purpose well. Arriving at his home, he saw that the roots were still intact, so he planted the sapling in the yard, and it grew.
The Sam Houston Pecan produced a fruit that was small but quite delicious. For many years, its pecans were distributed to Texas schools and colleges by Sam Houston State University at Huntsville. Several of the nuts also were sent to other state capitols and to the U.S. Capitol in Washington. The old home place is now a Texas shrine and is in Huntsville.
Read more about the Houston Pecan here.
San Saba Mother Pecan
The San Saba Mother Pecan was discovered by an Englishman named E. E. Risien, a cabinet maker by trade, who became fascinated with pecans.
Risien staged the first pecan show in San Saba County to find the best pecan specimen. After judging, he asked the winning exhibitor to show him the tree from which his pecans came. Risien was horrified when he saw it, for all the limbs had been sawed off except one. The man said that he had used that limb to stand on while he cut the others off to get the nuts.
Risien eventually bought the tree and the land on which it stood. Slowly the tree grew a new crown and once again began producing crops of the prize nuts. Thinking he could reproduce the fruit by seedlings, he planted the first commercial pecan nursery in San Saba County.
Artificial pollination of the “mother tree” continued for years as he tried to develop new varieties. He would ride horseback for miles seeking suitable “father trees,” gather the pollen-laden male blossoms in his saddlebags and bring them back to pollinate the “mother tree.” In addition to his pollination experiments, Risien also experimented with budding and grafting pecans when few people knew it could be done. Find more on the San Saba Mother Pecan here.
Original Burkett Pecan
In the fall of 1900, two young sons of J.H. Burkett were squirrel hunting in the bottomlands along Battle Fish Creek, in Callahan County. Neither realized that a handful of pecans they gathered from a squirrel's nest that day would later be a factor in placing their name in the history of pecan culture. Their father saw the nuts and, recognizing their excellence, urged the boys to find the parent tree. After some searching along the south bluff of the river, they found the tree.
It was on land owned by W. A. Orr of Putnam. It was protected on three sides by live oak and mesquite trees, and between it and the river was a tall elm, which protected the pecan from the eroding river waters. Each spring Burkett undertook to graft buds from the tree, but he had no success until 1903.
Someone destroyed the parent tree in 1910. But today, thanks to Burkett's work, the variety is firmly established. One of the first paper shell pecans, it grows best in the upland sandy soil of the Texas Cross Timbers region and requires less moisture than varieties such as the Stuart, which are found closer to the Gulf Coast. Learn more about the Original Burkett Pecan here.
Memorial Pecan
Women of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs planted the Memorial Pecan in Austin, in a simple yet impressive Memorial Day ceremony on May 30, 1945.
The planting was in honor of the heroic Texans of World War II and particularly those who lost their lives in that struggle. Governor Coke Stevenson gave the dedicatory address, and a color guard and bugler from American Legion Post 76 participated. Soil placed around the tree's roots was obtained in one-pound packages from each of Texas' 254 counties, and from General Eisenhower's birthplace at Denison and Admiral Nimitz's old home near Fredericksburg.
The original Memorial Pecan was removed during the capitol expansion project in the early 1990s, but a new tree was planted in 1993 near the east entrance to the Supreme Court building, with the original marker at its base. Wood from the original tree was reportedly used to make benches for the capital. Read more about the Memorial Pecan here.
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