Jun 28, 20222 min read

WECo Outdoor Show & National Cherry Day is July 16!

- by Emeline Bluestocking

Pretty Please, With a Cherry on Top!

This summer weather certainly has my mind on ice cream! And, who can resist a delicious

banana split with whipped cream and a cherry on top?

Young girls eating ice cream at the Tanners Historic Cafe!

I remember a report back in 1938 of a tree here in the county that could have made history. In fact, it would rival the legacy George Washington gave the cherry tree he chopped.

If you were to have driven down to a farm on the old Oakdale road one mile from Potter’s Falls, you may see what government men of the time declared to be the largest cherry tree in the United States - possibly the world. This tree was set out some time around the end of the Civil War. It measured eighteen feet in circumference at the ground level, and its height is estimated between 80 and 100 feet.

What would be decades ago now, when a basement was being dug under the house some sixty feet away, large roots from this tree were encountered and had to be cut. A noted tree expert has found that the roots of the average tree have a spread of one and one-half times its height. Thus, this patriarchal cherry tree should have a root

spread of seventy-five feet in each direction from the trunk. This tree bore luscious Blackstone cherries, and its largest known crop was the amazing quantity of four hundred gallons! Believe it or not, Mr. Ripley! (The photo above is a cherry tree in the woods near Sunbright and probably 25 years old!)

So, as you’re out and about enjoying the WECO Outdoor Show and the Heritage Museum’s exhibit on the town of Oakdale and you develop a hankerin’ for ice cream, stop in at Tanners Historic Cafe.