DEFIANCE — Visit Pontiac Park in Defiance, Ohio, and you’ll find one of the more unusual monuments in the state, yet one sublimely attuned to the autumn harvest season.
As seen in this 1973 Blade archive photo by Herral Long, it is an homage to a legendary French Indian Apple Tree, which, at 9 feet in diameter and 45 feet tall, was the largest ever recorded in the United States — and possibly the world.
The actual tree itself no longer exists, of course; it was felled during a storm in 1887. But it’s longevity is what rivaled its size: it was said to have been part of an orchard on the banks of the Maumee River, planted by French missionaries and traders during their exploration of the Great Lakes.
The tree was rooted to the north bank of the Maumee 100 years before the birth of America, and witnessed conflicts from the Revolutionary through the Civil War.
The first mention of the tree in American literature came through an 1869 pictorial guide to sites of the War of 1812, which called it “a living monument of the French occupation of the spot, as a trading station, long before any other Europeans had penetrated that remote wilderness.”
And around the turn of the 20th century, Occonoxee, the last chief of the Ottawa tribe in that area, claimed to have been born beneath the branches of the apple tree 83 years earlier.
The Pontiac Park marker is made of stone, yet its base is said to be the size of the original tree. It also informs visitors that the fallen giant had a spread of 60 feet (twice the length of a standard school bus), and in 1872 alone produced 200 bushels of apples.
Even in death, the tree has managed to live on. After its stormy demise, 20 pioneer and Native American tools were carved from its remains by William Bechel. They now reside in the local history department at the Defiance Public Library.
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First Published September 30, 2019, 10:00 a.m.
