Moving a palm tree in 1895, Phoenix, Arizona

As someone with an interest in palm trees, and Phoenix history, this article from 1895, which I found on the Library of Congress site, caught my eye. It's about the efforts made to move a ten-year-old date palm.

Moving a large palm tree isn't easy, or cheap, and it looks like in 1895 it was worth the effort, and cost, to Samuel Lount (the father of Hattie Mosher, by the way). Whether it was planted in 1885 or not, the article doesn't say, but my best guess is that it was a little two-year-old sapling when it was planted there on Van Buren Street, and in eight years it had grown into a magnificent tree.

Palm trees became common in Phoenix, mostly fan palms, but date palms were less common as they were more expensive, and still are. I couldn't get the inflation calculator site to go back to 1895, but in today's money Lount would have been paying over a thousand dollars to move it, probably closer to two thousand. This was a valuable and cherished tree!

Looks like it was a successful operation, and must have taken a lot of manpower. I wonder if they used mules or horses to help? Probably.


I like the reference to the Sandwich Islands, which is what Hawaii was called until 1819, and presumably people still referred to it that way. 


This incident shows that trees are held in proper estimation by Arizonians.
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