Environmentalist buys land to save ancient white oaks
Between 50 and 100 oaks are on the land, which was a mineral springs resort during the 1800s. Foresters estimate the trees are between 200 and 400 years old.
“You can almost hear those trees talk,” said John Noel, the activist and businessman who stepped in to save the property. “You can feel it, the history. When John Hancock, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were signing the Declaration of Independence, this forest was already growing.”
Noel is paying $270,000 to investors who bought the 35 acres outside Dickson at auction in September and were planning to timber it for wood veneer.
“We made a handshake deal in the middle of that forest, and they kept it,” said Noel, who also is a real estate investor.
“They listened to my plea not to cut that forest.”
Some of the trees stand more than 120 feet tall, with wide canopies and straight trunks. Their value ranges from $1,500 to $7,000, and such thick stands are rare because white oak is highly sought by Japanese and German veneer makers.
“I didn’t think there was any such piece of property in Tennessee, or the Southeast for that matter,” said Jack Little, a forestry management specialist who recently walked the property with Noel and state officials.
“John did the right thing, bless his heart. That should be preserved for generations in the future to see because there’s nothing like it around.”
Noel, president of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and vice president of the Tennessee Conservation Voters, first heard about the trees from the son of a former owner who was concerned that they had been auctioned off.
After talking with state conservation officials, Noel struck a deal to buy the land himself because the state might not be able to move quickly enough to save the woods.
The State Building Commission last week approved plans to purchase the land from Noel pending an appraisal. The process could take a year, with the money coming from a combination of federal funds, trusts, grants or state money set aside for land acquisition.
The land was part of a more than 100-acre spread that once included the posh Bon Aqua Springs resort hotel.
A train traveled 35 miles from Nashville three times a day during the 1800s and 1900s, carrying passengers who wanted to soak in the resort’s sulfur and sweet water mineral springs. The Tennessee Bar Association held its first conference there in 1882.
Reggie Reeves, director of the state’s Natural Heritage Division, said the oaks, the history, a cave and other plants, including umbrella magnolia trees, combine to make the property a real find.
Noel paid about twice the going price for land in the area to save the trees.
“I don’t think I got a bargain. I think it is a bargain to have saved it,” Noel said. “If it was gone, you wouldn’t have anything.”