Devil's Den Witness Tree in 1863 Photo?

@Rain Woman, @gettysburg Greg’s great thread about the white oak at the top of Devil’s Den is a good one. There are a few people who know a lot about tree ages based on circumference of their trunks and the growing conditions, and they do believe this tree is a witness tree. I am one of them, having studied forestry at Penn State. The park service isn’t big on formally designating trees as witness trees (even trees that were given metal ID tags and lightning arrestor cables back when the War Department ran the park) but this one is so accepted as a witness that a tree service (paid for by a donor, not the NPS) regularly attends to the tree’s welfare. There are only a couple other trees the NPS agrees are witnesses—the swamp white oak across from the Trostle barn a.k.a. The Sickles tree, and the recently dead “God” tree, a white oak on Culp’s Hill that bore the scars of battle all its life—and the DD white oak is one of them.
 
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