Witness Trees is a public art and ecological storytelling initiative that identifies, marks, and interprets living trees that predate the founding of the United States. As the nation prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, the Witness Tree Ribbon introduces a powerful and unifying memorial gesture. The project honors America’s oldest living trees, many more than 250 years old and still standing across New York State, as biological archives that have endured revolution, industrialization, urban expansion, and climate change. These trees witnessed the birth of the country and remain living symbols of endurance, continuity, and shared heritage.

The Witness Tree Ribbon invites individuals and communities to tie a commemorative biodegradable ribbon around a verified historic tree or any meaningful local tree as a simple and dignified act of recognition. This temporary, fully reversible gesture transforms living trees into civic monuments while ensuring no harm to the organism. An online public map identifying New York’s verified Witness Trees, accompanied by educational materials and local programming, provides broad public access and participation. The initiative offers every resident a way to engage in the Semiquincentennial through an inclusive, nonpolitical act rooted in environmental stewardship.

By foregrounding deep time, ecological resilience, and intergenerational responsibility, Witness Trees aligns with the NEA’s commitment to public engagement, cultural heritage, and creative placemaking. The ribbon serves both as a tribute to the past and as a forward looking pledge to care for the landscapes that will carry the United States into its next 250 years.

Across American history, trees have functioned not only as natural resources but as civic markers and gathering places. From colonial commons and frontier settlements to town greens and rural crossroads, large trees often served as sites of assembly, proclamation, protest, and remembrance. Long before monuments were cast in bronze or carved in stone, communities oriented themselves around living landmarks. These trees framed public life, shaded markets and meetings, and stood silently at the edges of pivotal events.

In dendrochronological terms, each annual growth ring corresponds to a specific year, embedding climatic conditions and environmental stress within the tree’s structure. A tree that predates 1776 contains within its wood a continuous biological record of droughts, storms, industrial pollution, warming temperatures, and shifting ecologies. In this sense, Witness Trees are not symbolic abstractions but measurable archives of environmental history. Their bodies register the material consequences of national development, expansion, and technological change.

Many of these trees also stand on lands shaped by layered human histories, including Indigenous stewardship, colonial displacement, agricultural transformation, and urbanization. Recognizing Witness Trees therefore expands the narrative of American heritage beyond singular political events. It situates the nation within longer ecological and cultural continuities that precede and exceed the founding moment. The project encourages reflection on whose histories are rooted in these landscapes and how shared stewardship can move forward responsibly.

By elevating historic trees as living monuments, Witness Trees proposes a model of commemoration grounded in care rather than extraction. Instead of erecting new structures, the initiative directs attention to organisms already standing among us. In doing so, it reframes national celebration as an act of environmental literacy and collective responsibility, linking past endurance with future resilience.

Credits: Terreform ONE, Mitchell Joachim, Mark Chambers, Vivian Kuan, Julie Bleha

Sponsor: National Endowment for the Arts