Carteret County Champion Trees

Champion LIve Oak (Quercus virginiana) 2005

In 2005, the members of CC-TAG began a campaign to locate and name the champion Live Oak (Quercus virginiana. Articles in the local paper requested citizens to nominate trees for the honor. Over fifty citizens did so and the nominated trees were measured. The Live Oak that was declared the champion of Carteret County lives in a family cemetary on the bluff of the Newport River in Crab Point, an area of Morehead City. This is the story of that tree, told at the naming ceremony held on a cold and blustery day in January, 2005.

Let your imagination go back into time about 300 years ago and envision this land upon which we stand when this tree most likely sprouted from an acorn. You will have to imagine Carteret County without any buildings, without roads, bridges, or railroad tracks. What was here was the ocean and sounds, the rivers and creeks, marshes, sand, grasses, native trees and shrubs. Fish was abundant as likely were the snakes and bugs. And there were people here too when this large tree was but a sappling…Tuscarora Indians in villages all along the coast, fishing and shellfishing the waters. The white settlers moved into Carteret County just about the time this tree sprouted, 300 years ago. Nathan Adams, the owner of a plantation along the Newport River was one of those early settlers. He is an ancestor of this tree's present owner, Alma Moran.

 

Our Champion Oak Tree was about 6 years old when the Indians attacked the settlers in the war of 1711. That war ended three years later when the last of the Indians were driven out. Our tree here was probably about 8-10 feet tall when that war ended. At the birth of these United States , this tree was already about 75 years old.

 

Ten years later when this tree was about 85 years old, the Stage and mail line was opened from Beaufort to Pollacksville. Just about the time our tree was celebrating its 100 th year, land was deeded for Cape Lookout Lighthouse. During this tree's 130 th year, Fort Macon was completed and sometime around the halfway mark from acorn to today, this tree grew right through the Civil War. A hundred years later, German submarines were picking off ships along our coast. This live oak had lived about 230 years then. It is just in the last 70 years in the life of this Champion Oak tree that other landmarks of Carteret County came into being: the hospital, the community college, the library, the Aquarium, the Maritime Museum and the influx of visitors and residents from afar.

 

Live Oak Trees are very resilient in storms and this 300 year old tree has lived through many hurricanes, perhaps as many as 120 though records were not kept before 1901. We do know that it survived the great hurricane of 1933 when half of Carteret County was under water and Hurricane Hazel that wrought such devastation on Morehead City in 1954. May she survive future storms as well and live hundreds more years.

Champion Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiania) 2006

 A search for the Carteret County Red Cedar tree was undertaken within an Urban and Community Forestry Grant Program awarded to The Tree Awareness Group. All red cedar trees nominated by citizens for consideration were measured by several teams of members of CC-TAG. The combination of width of canopy, height of the tree and the circumference of the trunk, 4 feet from the ground, became the points awarded to the tree, the standard of measurment for a champion tree. The points for two of the red cedar trees measured were so close that those two trees were named Co-champion Carteret Red Cedar Trees. Both trees are on private property, one in Mill Creek and the other in Marshallburg. Certificates, hand painted and lettered by a local award winning artist were given to the owners of the trees.

  Champion Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) 2008

Twenty two magnolia trees were nominated and subsequently measured by girth, height and spread. The sum of those measurements, or total points, determined the winning tree. The champion tree borders the parking lot behind the condominiums at 121 Front Street in Beaufort. With a girth of 142 inches, a height of 60 feet and a spread of 76 feet, the champion tree had far more points than any other tree measured.

The site of the condomininiums previously was the location of the Davis Boarding House as it was known in the 1880's. It is told that the boarders liked to sit on the front porch and enjoy the evening breezes. The house was later used to house students and visiting faculty from the Duke Marine Lab.