The 100 Oaks Project
The goal of this project is to document the 100 oldest living oaks in the South In April 1934, Dr. Edwin Lewis Stephens, the first president of the Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now University of Louisiana at Lafayette), published an article in the Louisiana Conservation Review titled, "I Saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing." From his orientation as a scholar and poet, he recognized the deeper truth of this icon of the South – that more than any other aspect of the landscape, the live oak symbolically reflects the most memorable and distinctive characteristics of the cultures and people that settled this area: strength of character, forbearance, longevity and a hearty nature. Eventually, Stephens was inspired to propose the creation of an organization that might preserve and protect the most senior members of this oak species, those "…whose age is not less than a hundred years..." He was not at a loss for examples near his home in Lafayette. As he noted in his Conservation Review article, "I, at present, number among my personal acquaintance forty-three such live oaks in Louisiana eligible for charter membership." These forty-three oaks comprised his original inductees into what is known today as the Live Oak Society. Seventy-four years later, the Society counts more than 5800 member oaks on its registry in 14 states (and now includes junior league trees with a girth of at least eight feet). After the devastating one-two blow of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in late 2005, I realized that even the most permanent aspects of my native Louisiana could be lost overnight. Even centuries-old trees are not invincible to the increasingly powerful hurricanes the Gulf Coast is experiencing. So I turned my focus to documenting the survivors – the Society's 100 largest and oldest oaks, beginning with Dr. Lewis's forty-three charter member trees.