It’s probably the most beautiful time of year. Trees change color. Their leaves turn from dark summer green to brilliant shades of sunset hue. The morning air is cool and crisp, warmed by an afternoon sun that’s neither too hot nor too cold. To cap it off are the days marked by a cool autumn mist, the type that brings with it a certain sweetness to the air.
Though beautiful in many ways, autumn comes with sadness to it. As the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer, the season brings with it a reminder that winter is near. The birds we watched all summer long, that now cackle through the sky, will soon leave us for the warmer climates of the South. The trees, springtime homes to families of birds shading the earth with clusters of rich foliage, are soon to be bare and will stretch their skeletal arms into the cold November air. No, it is not a season of joy like spring and summer, yet it’s the season I love.
It was one of these beautifully sad autumns in 1938 that tragedy befell a beloved Hutchinson landmark.
Years ago, Hutchinson was home to a most peculiar sight. On Glen Street, in the middle of the road, grew the largest elm tree in Minnesota. The tree was so large that it was said if a man measured the thickest part of the trunk, that his tape measure would read 15 feet. For years the tree was a landmark of the community. Children played on it, birds sang in it and the proud citizens on Glen Street tended it for decades. In many ways, it was seen as a last mark of wilderness within the city, a lone tree from Minnesota’s frontier era that somehow survived into the 20th century. Yet in 1938, when it was deemed that this last vestige of wilderness stood in the way of progress, the powers that be made the decision that the tree must come down.
The citizens of Hutchinson met the news of the tree’s fate with much resentment. To them, it was a crime to fell the state’s largest elm because it blocked the view of the new school on Glen Street. During a City Council meeting, shortly after the declaration, Mayor Grant Dwinnell was met with a barrage of citizens armed with petitions. With such an outcry from the public, the mayor had little choice but to grant a reprieve for the giant elm. It looked, at least for a time, that Minnesota’s “mightiest” elm would remain in place. But then, something sinister happened.
During a cool, fall night, much like those we are in right now, a number of mysterious axmen gathered around the tree under the cover of darkness. Rumors claimed that these shadowy woodmen were hooded and carried large axes. They formed a circle and began swinging their axes. In about an hour’s time, they had cut a deep groove around the base of the tree, a process known as “girdling,” and left.
The next morning, the folks on Glen Street awoke to the sight of the giant elm. Its fate was now sealed, as it could in no way survive long with a deep groove cut at its base. On Nov. 15 of that year, a crew of workers came to finish the job started by the mysterious axmen earlier that fall. To this day, the identities of the hooded men remain a mystery, long lost in the deep vaults of local history.
