Manassas National Battlefield Park’s silent ‘Witness Trees’ tell a story

PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY — It’s a story that might have come from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, of trees that observed momentous events of history. But instead of Ents, they are “Witness Trees.”

Though they can’t speak, they tell a story. What was originally a surveyor’s mark to designate property lines, Witness Trees have morphed into observers of important historical events. 

According to Bryan Gorsira, the Natural Resource Program Manager at Manassas National Battlefield Park, about eight trees have been designated as Witness Trees to the troop movements of the First and Second Battles of Manassas. While there are no plans to identify more, Gorsira estimates that there are “hundreds of other trees that old in the park that have not been designated.”

The park website provides a map of the location of the designated trees. Gorsira admits that the Park uses the term Witness Tree rather loosely, but that “no other term provided the impact they wanted.”

Witness Trees, as the name implies, usually stood near the action of a specific historical event, such as the tree that President Lincoln passed by in Pennsylvania on his way to deliver the Gettysburg Address.

It takes more than just age to qualify a Witness Tree. It must be located near some historic event to earn that designation.

Though if there is a tree with a confirmed age of over 150 years in your yard, it may be a Witness Tree to events in your family. If a property owner has evidence, such as written testimony or a photograph of a historic event that occurred at a tree, then that is a Witness Tree, even if it is on private property.

If they are on private property, the owner can have the tree cored to determine the age.

The U.S. War Department began marking and protecting Witness Trees in the 1930’s. Gorsira said that “Witness Trees in the Park were identified by overlaying drawings of historic maps and photos, aerial photographs from the 1930’s and current photographs” to determine stands of vegetation that were present in all three times. Likely trees were then bored to obtain a core that enabled staff to count the rings and determine the age of the tree.

A Witness Tree protection program began in 2006 to identify historically significant trees in the Washington, D. C. area.

Documented stories and photographs of these trees are on record at the Library of Congress. This is an ongoing project, and there is no confirmed number of the trees that have been identified.

Rob Orrison, of the Prince William Historic Preservation Division, says that the trees on the Manassas National Battlefield Park, even though they do not stand witness to a particular historic event other than troop movements, help to connect people to the story of the Civil War, allowing “them to touch history.”

Trees wounded by what they witnessed

Like the surveyor’s markings and the new designation of Survivor Trees that lived through the Oklahoma City Bombing, the attack on the World Trade Center, and the Japanese Tsunami, Witness Trees often bear the scars of what they saw. Bullets and cannonballs are sometimes embedded in the wood of these trees as a testament to the events that occurred around them.

To touch history, visit the Manassas National Battlefield Park and walk the trails where the Witness Trees still grow after surviving the battles of the Civil War and the ravages of time.