HANOVER – A new sign is set to be installed near the intersection of Route 39 and Hanover Road to commemorate a local tree once designated the largest living tree east of the Rockies.

An unveiling ceremony for a New York state historical marker memorializing the 400-year-old Hanover elm tree will be held Friday at 1 p.m. in Hanover Town Hall, with refreshments to follow.

The towering elm attracted visitors and schoolchildren near and far for decades due to its massive size until succumbing to Mother Nature’s fury during a 1938 windstorm.

“The elm had quite a bit of fame in the early 1900s, especially once automobiles arrived,” Town Historian Vincent Martonis explained. “People would take a weekend and say, ‘Let’s go to the Hanover elm,’ and they’d have a picnic there. So, you’d drive up there and there’d be a line of cars on the road with people walking up into the woods and visiting the elm tree.

“The tree, prior to settlers coming here, was revered by the Indians. It was a place for council meetings. They looked at this tree as being a great spirit of the forest.”

The popular tree, sometimes referred to as the Knapp elm tree in honor of landowner Jason Knapp, stood about 150 feet high and held a circumference of 35 feet near the base, Martonis said.

He added the elm won two “big tree” contests: one sponsored by the American Agriculturalist magazine and the other by the New York State College of Forestry.

About three years after the tree toppled over, history enthusiast Everett Burmaster of Irving led a team effort to extract three horizontal slices from the tree, with each portion taking about a full day to saw off.

One of those slices, with historical pictures by Seneca Indian artist Sanford Plummer on it, currently sits in the town court, where the ceremony on Friday will be held. Burmaster put the slice on loan at the Cattaraugus County Museum in Little Valley in 1955. After Martonis found out it was on loan, he asked Burmaster’s grandchildren in 1992 to donate it to the town of Hanover, which they agreed to.

Another chunk of the elm went to the Buffalo Museum of Science, where it is still displayed.

“I’m not sure where Burmaster got the idea to cut the slices and having his friend paint pictures on it, but I’m so thrilled that he did,” Martonis remarked. “We have not only a piece of our forestry history preserved, but we have 33 historical (oil) paintings on it that also preserve elements of local and national history.”

Plummer, a past staff artist for the Buffalo Museum of Science, painted the pictures in 1941. The images depict Fredonia Civil War hero Cmdr. William B. Cushing, an early automobile and Chautauqua County’s first settler, Amos Sottle, among other images.

As a souvenir, each person attending the Friday ceremony will be given a postcard depicting a color photo of the town’s elm slice.

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