Early in its youth growing in a floodplain was an excellent start for the tree. The Sandy Lick Creek is normally a small steam. In the summer it may be as little as twenty feet across and a foot deep. At other times the stream floods and overtops its banks. Major floods have covered many of the little towns along its path. In places the creeks flood plain is perhaps a half-mile wide. In slow times it carries silt and clay sized particles along.   During floods larger rocks are moved. The stream scours its bottom deepening it, only to be filled back in again as the water recedes. When the floodwater moving rapidly in the stream channel overtops the banks it spreads out and slows. It drops the larger particles it is carrying at the edge of the channel. Over time these eventually form a raised levee along the edges of the river. From the top of the levee the flood plain slopes backward toward the banks of the floodplain itself. Water flowing from the channel during floods, and small streams from the surrounding hillsides finds itself trapped by the levee and forms backwater swamps along the edge of the floodplain. These are areas ideal for the growth of many trees such as out silver maple. If there is a large enough volume of water these swamps will form stream that flow parallel to the main river until it finds a breach in the levee that allows it to join the main flow of the creek again. These are called Yazoo streams and are known as such the world over. They were named that after the Yazoo River in Yazoo City, Mississippi. The Yazoo River is a large example of this type of stream flowing parallel to the Mississippi River. Over time the creek meanders back and forth across its flood plain, eroding banks here and depositing bars there. Over time the meanders move upstream in a slow march. How much of this was witnessed by the old Silver Maple?



Land use changes were witnessed by the old Silver Maple. The bottom of the floodplain was once covered by floodplain forests. These were cut as the city of Dubois grew. By the early 1900's almost all of William Penn's great woods was gone. The entire state was denuded aside from a tiny patch here and there by chance spared from the loggers saws. Sometime in the late 1800's a railroad was built along the edge of the floodplain. Railroads tended to follow the edges of floodplains as these had the low slope needed for the pathway. Here and there along the route the railroad bed was built up filling in parts of the backwater swamp, or cut into the debris at the bas of the surrounding hills. The tree likely outdates the railroad. It is near the tracks but is not growing on the rubble of the railroad bed. These trains were used to move coal across the country. At one time the world's largest coal tipple was in Reynoldsville, PA a few miles from the line from here. Still the old Silver Maple has be exposed to over a hundred years of the roar of train engines, the clackity clack of untold miles of trains, and the belch of coal smoke and diesel fumes from tens of thousands of trains.



The highway runs parallel to the train tracks past the tree. I am sure that occasional horse drawn carriages were the norm in the early years of the tree. Now thousands of cars pass by every day. A convenience store was built a few years ago, along with the associated stop light directly across the tracks and road from the tree. The biggest changes witnessed by the tree was in the floodplain itself. In the middle of the last century Sandy Lick Creek was channelized as a flood control measure and large portions of the floodplain swamps were drained to allow development. Channelizing a stream is not a particularly effective flood control method. The associated changes in land use in the area, and loss the natural water retention in the lost floodplain swamp assured that floods would continue. The channel just made sure that areas downstream would have worse floods on a more frequent basis than ever before. Yet people persist even today with perplexing foolishness to build in floodplains. They are called floodplains because this is where the river floods. In the early 70's more of the floodplain was drained. Ditches cut perpendicular to the stream reach to the edges of the floodplain to drain the water for an industrial park. One such ditch lies a hundred feet or so upstream of the old Silver Maple. I am told that some other wetlands were "constructed" to replace a portion of the drained lands. The water regime in the vicinity of the old tree has been forever changed.

At some point a series of silver maple trees were planted at the edge of the floodplain. These run along the embankment parallel to and below the railroad tracks just below the old Silver Maple. They are spaced about twenty feet apart and have grown to a foot or so in diameter since planted. There are gaps were some of the trees have died and those remaining are broken and bedraggled. Perhaps it was a beautification attempt undertaken to hide the railroad tracks from the newly drained land.

The old Silver Maple tree is not the standard definition of beauty. It is surrounded by shorter brush. The tree has large broken limbs reaching above a fat trunk. What the tree has is character. It shows its age and it shows the struggle it has had for survival. It is a witness to of the history of change in the area. It is a survivor from the past. In these way the tree is indeed beautiful.

Edward Frank