IREDELL - PIEDMONT COUNTY
by Homer M. Keever

Published for the Iredell County Bicentennial Commission by Brady Printing Company from type set by the Statesville Record & Landmark
November 1976

Chapter 3 — Forests

Another phase of the impact of trees on the life of Iredell has been their use for shade, especially in Statesville. John Sharpe, historian of the early years of this century, passed on a tradition that the site for Statesville was picked because it was a rough chinquapin ridge, unfit for farming and without any sizable trees. The logs to build the first courthouse had to be hauled from the nearby creeks. From such beginnings Statesville has become a city of trees. In May of 1899 the editor of "Charity and Children" after a visit to the Baptist Association meeting noted that "Statesville is doubly attractive now as it nestles in magnificent trees clothed in their spring foliage. The streets are the best shaded of any town in the state, and we hope the trees will never be sacrificed for electric or telephone wires or any other cause. They are Statesville's glory."

Even before the Civil War attempts were being made to make the town a city of trees. E. B. Drake, editor of Statesville's first newspaper, the "Iredell Express," had his say in the issue of March 11, 1859. "We perceive that the court house square has been improved by the transplanting of trees from the neighboring forests. We are pleased with the good taste which has induced this improvement. Will not those owning lots on the principal streets of the town follow their good example and enhance both the comfort and value of their property by planting shade trees in front? Allow me to make one or two suggestions: Select good trees not less than three inches in diameter and straight ones. Use great care in arranging them in straight lines, and reject the sycamore and common oak. Other kinds, such as elm, maple and locusts are best."

His advice became gospel to the citizens of Statesville. During the last half of the 19th century Statesville became a city of elms. So much was this so that when the county commissioners sent the superintendent of the chain gang with a crew of his men in 1900 to remove some of the elms from the courthouse yard to make room for a walkway, it brought about a confrontation with objecting citizens who threatened to use the law to stop them or even use force if the commissioners persisted in removing their elms. A compromise was effected by which the chairman of the county commissioners promised to employ an Asheville landscape artist to advise which trees to remove.

What the commissioners could not do, the elm beetles did. They were already at work on the elms on Walnut Street, and in a few years the courthouse elms were so infected that they had to be drastically pruned, again amidst a furor between those who saw pruning as the only way to save the elms and those who saw it as nothing less than the murder of innocent trees. Luckily, R. B. McLaughlin, local attorney and prophet of trees for the beautification of Statesville, had been experimenting with oaks and had set out some in the courthouse yard, water oaks they were called at first, and then after a protest has been raised about that name, willow oaks. The willow oak, Quercus phellos, has replaced the elm as Statesville's main tree, especially in front of the courthouse and along Broad Street. They are a fast-growing and hardy tree. The giants along Broad Street are not much more than 50 years old.

Other attempts have been made to line the streets of Statesville with trees, including the dogwoods on the uptown sidewalks in the late 1960s. One of the more interesting campaigns came in 1923, when a city beautification fund of $390 was collected a dollar at a time from as many citizens. Under the leadership of Dr. C.E. Raynal, the bulk of that money was spent to line the Boulevard with sugar maples, chosen for their hardiness, for their shade, and for the beauty of their foliage. The rest of the money was spent to provide dogwoods for Davie Avenue.

Most of the trees along Statesville streets are native ones brought in from the neighboring forests — elms, willow oaks, red maples. Others have been brought in from further away. The sugar maples and the linden trees that line North Center Street come from the nearby mountains. From still further away come such exotic trees as the crepe myrtles and the golden rain tree that stood so long in front of the First Presbyterian Church and the little Gingko in front of the library. One exotic tree from China has been so plentiful that it became a pest. That is the copal, fast-spreading and ill-smelling, often called the tree of Heaven, Ailanthus altimissa. In the years before the Civil Way they had become so plentiful and such a weed that the city council passed an ordinance taxing each copal tree left in Statesville by a certain date two dollars each. The move was not a money-raising plan, but a move to get rid of the copals. There is no hint as to whether or not it worked, but it came just before the elms were first set out on the courthouse lawn and E. B. Drake began his campaign for a city beautiful.