Notes from the Archives · January 2026
A First Gift to the Highlands Museum
How a hemlock slice of 439 rings came to the museum in 1928, and the centuries of history held in its wood.
Begin readingThe gift
Familiar to anyone who ever visited the Highlands Museum—now the Highlands Nature Center—is the large hemlock slice that has been on display since July of 1928.
The July 8, 1929, minutes of the Board of Trustees report that a slice from “a hemlock stump on the property of the Highlands Estates” (now the Country Club) was offered to the museum by Scott Hudson, its president. The July 22, 1928, minutes further explain that “Mr. (W. M.) Cleaveland said the hemlock tree at the golf course would be ready for installation in the coming week.” Mr. Cleaveland, a local builder, was asked to mount and treat the wood for preservation.
“The problem of marking the 439 rings to associate the tree with the history of this region and the nation was discussed. It was decided that the most feasible method would be to mark the rings with very small pin tags bearing numbers to correspond to a label with the tree’s history and political and general history.”
“To arouse popular interest, everybody will be asked to suggest incidents of sufficient importance to be memorialized on the tree. A Board committee of Miss (Albertina) Staub, Mrs. (Mary Chapin) Smith, and Mr. (Thomas) Harbison will choose suitable suggestions.”
The following summer, a report by Museum Director E. E. Reinke noted that the slice “elicited the greatest interest on the part of the casual visitor in terms of its growth and age interpreted through national and local history.”
The slice still resides in the Nature Center today and continues to capture the attention of visitors. As noted by Randolph P. Shaffner in Heart of the Blue Ridge Highlands, North Carolina, the 500-plus-year-old tree “was a sapling of three years when Columbus set sail on his voyage to America in 1492.”
Bryding Adams, Volunteer Archivist, January 2026
“A living record of time—this hemlock began its life years before Columbus set sail, quietly recording centuries of change in its rings.”
Four centuries, one ring at a time
In 1928 the trustees talked of marking the rings with small pin tags tied to moments in history. Choose a year below, or drag from the seedling at the center out to the bark, to see what was happening beyond these ridges as the hemlock grew.
1489 — A Tree Is Born
Time Written in Wood
As Aldo Leopold once observed in A Sand County Almanac, a tree can tell more than its own story. What appears at first as simple sawdust and wood is, on closer look, a record of time itself—written year by year in concentric rings.
Each ring marks a season of growth, but together they hold something larger: the passing of generations, the rise and fall of human histories, and the slow, patient rhythms of the natural world. In this slice of hemlock, ecological time and human time intersect—quietly preserved in wood.
To read these rings is to read a history measured not in moments, but in centuries.
Reading Time in Trees: Dendrology & This Eastern Hemlock
Dendrology is the study of trees—their growth, structure, age, and relationship to the environments they inhabit. One of the most powerful tools in dendrology is the study of tree rings, where each ring represents a single year of growth. Wide rings may reflect favorable conditions such as ample rainfall, while narrow rings can record years of drought, competition, or disturbance. Together, these rings form a natural archive of environmental and historical change.
This Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) began its life in 1489, sprouting in a Southern Appalachian forest long before European settlement reached this region. Over the next 439 years, it added one ring at a time—silently recording centuries of climate variation, ecological shifts, and human history. When the tree was cut down in 1928, its cross-section preserved a continuous record spanning nearly four and a half centuries.
By studying this slice, dendrology allows us to connect biological time with human time—linking world events, regional history, and environmental change to the steady, patient growth of a single tree. What you see here is not just wood, but a living timeline written in rings.
Still on display
Nearly a century after the trustees first talked about marking its rings, the slice is still part of the Highlands Nature Center.