Main Street Loses a Big One

At first it seemed a time for mourning: Main Street's last large elm, at the corner of Allen Street, had been cut down. The stump— an inelegant word at best when referring to an old friend —measured almost four feet across and its rings indicated that the deceased had been been well over 80, perhaps as much as (choke) 100 years old! Sad. A tragic loss. The passing of one more thing that made Dartmouth. well, Dartmouth.

But before letting nostalgia turn into a dirge we decided to talk with Town Tree Warden Bob Thibodeau, who serves jointly as the College's tree warden. He takes a much more sanguine view of the affair, sort of the way a family physician treats the death of an elderly, infirm patient.

Trees have lifespans, just like humans. Elms —even some infected with Dutch elm disease as are most of Hanover's are expected to live about 60 to 100 years. Since the 1960s there has been a sophisticated College tree program designed to maintain, save, and protect the elms —a program that is modified as knowledge about, and treatment for, the disease improves. Right now there are some 100 large elms in the management plan. That includes a pair of younger elms, planted a dozen years ago in front of Main Street's Municipal Building. They're thriving and in a few years may make up for the one that had to go.

The oldtimer was diseased and its root system was badly stressed under the pavement and sidewalk. Chances are it had been planted at the turn of the century during one of Hanover's two major tree-planting campaigns the other was in connection with the College's centennial in 1869.