Markers of History

Colonial Parkway mark­ers
Great Oaks

Location: Colonial National Historic Pkwy, Williamsburg, VA 23185

Visited: July 4, 2009, 1:15pm

Transcription of marker: These oaks were sprout­ing acorns about 1750 and were grow­ing toward fair size dur­ing the time of Washington, Jefferson, Wythe and Marshall.

They are white oaks (Quercus alba) with a height near 90 feet and a spread together of some 150 feet.

My impres­sions: Back on the road after a stop in Williamsburg for lunch and con­tin­u­ing on our way toward Jamestown. This does seem like more of a link to the past than the mill pond (which was the last marker we saw before break­ing for lunch). I think it’s because trees grow with age and so the size of the trees adds to the link to the past, at least in my mind. That said, I was get­ting tired of stop­ping for these mark­ers (prob­a­bly because they con­tain so lit­tle his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion), and we grad­u­ally stopped at fewer and fewer pull-offs as we continued.