The Green Tree

The Borough of Green Tree took its name from a stately sycamore that stood at the heart of the community for more than a century and a half. In pre-Revolutionary War days, when the tree was still a sapling, Indians traveled beside it along Warriors' Ridge on the way to Logstown, now Ambridge. In 1753 George Washington passed by while seeking a more direct route between Fort Pitt and Fort Henry in Wheeling, West Virginia, and in the second half of the 1700's Colonel Henry Bouquet led his Black Horse Brigade along the same path for peace talks with the Indians. By the late 1790's the trail was known as the Black Horse Trail, while local residents used the sycamore as the "Green Tree post office," meeting there to wait for regular mail left under the tree. In 1819 the road became the Washington and Pittsburgh Turnpike, known as Washington Pike, a regular stagecoach route between Pittsburgh and Washington, Pennsylvania, with three trips a week taking seven hours and charging tolls, and the tree became a regular stop with a bench and mail drop box beneath it. The name Green Tree was used unofficially for the area as early as 1846, and when the settlement separated from Union Township in 1885 to form a borough, it adopted the name from the tree that had long served as the community's meeting place. In 1905 a windstorm knocked the sycamore down and blocked Greentree Road for more than a day, but new branches grew from the stump. Residents tried to preserve the aging landmark, but by 1940 it was failing, and in 1945 the Duquesne Light Company cut it down at the property owner's request before civic leaders knew it was to be removed. The tree had stood for almost 200 years as a familiar landmark in western Pennsylvania, and its leaves and wood were preserved in local civic traditions.

Green Tree, Pennsylvania · United States