DESTRUCTION OF CENTURY CYPRESS TREES TRIGGERS ACTION

KVEO 23

Brownsville Herald

Various Sources

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — The noble Cypress tree is a vanishing species. The cypresses that were planted along the resacas in Brownsville, Texas in the 1920’s. They were planted for a beautification effort and carried on by the Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

At that time Filmer Park, now called Lincoln Park, was lined with all kinds of rare trees. They were planted by the expressway. Then the city started cutting down the trees at the other end by 6th street. The neighborhood witnessed the cutting down of the trees and said, ‘no, you can’t do that.’ They marched on city hall and saved about three trees.

At one time, cypresses extended all the way from just about the mouth of the river up to Roma. During the steamboat times those trees were cut down in order to supply the steamboats with the wood in order to fire their boilers. 

But time marched on and with it came an end to the park as the US 77/83 Expressway was expanded to connect with Los Tomates Bridge in the late 90s leaving behind only three of the cypresses.

On Oct. 26 a TxDOT ground crew working in the old Lincoln Park, now a TxDOT right of way under the elevated US 83/77 Expressway, pruned two of the hundred-year-old Montezuma cypress trees that grew in between the main lanes.

Eugene Fernandez, director of South Texas Center for Historical and Genealogical Research, was alerted with a phone call.
“They said ‘Mr. Fernandez, you don’t know me, but…have you seen Lincoln Park lately?’ and there was this pause and I said ‘oh my God why’,” remembers Fernandez.

Fernandez learned that the crews had not only pruned the old trees, but that they had chained the branches to a truck and literally tore the limbs from his old friends.

The trees had been over-pruned to the extent that almost nothing remained of their former leafy crowns. Fernandez was horrified, not only at the loss of the trees themselves, but for the loss they represented to the history of Brownsville.

Fernandez, a known champion of the trees through his work with the Jagou Plantation, was ready to take up their cause.

He reached out to the city of Brownsville and crafted an online petition to send out to his 1,500 followers collecting signatures that could then be presented to TxDOT to get reparations. City municipal code requires an assessment from the city forester to remove major trees of importance, according to Fernandez.

Never one to air a problem without a solution, Fernandez proposed that TxDOT purchase 12 Montezuma cypress trees from a nursery in Harlingen. Two trees could be planted to replace the ones lost, while the others would be placed on vistas around Brownsville for the public.

Then each tree could be adopted by one of Fernandez’s followers and watched over for a year until established enough to survive.

In late December TxDOT agreed with the plan.

“As partners, we work in a way that is responsible and in harmony with local authorities. In this case, to show our goodwill, TxDOT has agreed to provide the city with 12 cypress trees to be planted on the city right of way and to be maintained by the city,” said Octavio O. Saenz, Public Information Officer for TxDOT in a statement on Dec. 18.

Fernandez agreed that City of Brownsville Public Works and TxDOT crews should receive environmental sensitivity training to recognize and protect local plant and animal species that give this area a unique ecosystem that should be protected. He said he would propose that crews receive that training to city administrators. 

Cypress trees of this magnitude are indeed a vanished species. The question remains; have we gone too far? What was once here in the 1920’s was a lush, beautiful garden that was built and cared for by the citizens of Brownsville. Now only one remains and it is our legacy.