Fact Friday 458 - How Charlotte Became a City of Trees

Photo: Myers Park neighborhood, Charlotte by Bz3rk, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Happy Friday!

Look up this time of year and you'll see one of Charlotte's best features changing color overhead. Few big American cities have a tree canopy like ours, and that's no accident.

Photo: Dilworth, Charlotte by James Willamor, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A lot of it goes back to the early 1900s, when the developers of streetcar suburbs like Dilworth and Myers Park hired landscape architects whose top advice was simple: plant trees. John Nolen, who designed Independence Park in 1905, moved trees into Myers Park's old cotton fields and planted plenty more, trucking in hundreds of young trees from Cotswold and Oakhurst. His favorite was the willow oak, and willow oaks still tower over streets like Queens Road. Many of Charlotte's most majestic trees were planted between 1895 and 1920. (For more on the neighborhood itself, see Fact Friday 125: Myers Park.)

Not every chapter was tree-friendly. In the winter of 1912, the trees along Tryon Street were cut down to make room for the "Great White Way," a new run of electric streetlights pushed by James B. Duke's Southern Power Company.

Later, the city got serious about protecting what it had. Charlotte hired its first city arborist in 1974 and adopted a tree ordinance in 1978. In 2011, City Council set a goal of 50% tree cover by 2050, and the nonprofit TreesCharlotte launched the next year, planting 4,056 trees in its first year alone.

Growth has made that goal tough. Canopy coverage slipped from 49% in 2012 to 45% in 2018, a net loss of roughly 250,000 trees, and the city has since backed away from "50 by 50" as unrealistic. Many of the old willow oaks are also reaching the end of their lives.

So enjoy the leaves this weekend. Take a walk under the oaks in Myers Park or Dilworth, and if you have the room, plant a tree of your own. Rather wear one? Our City of Charlotte Dogwood Crown Hoodie puts the dogwood, North Carolina's state flower, on the city's crown.

More Fact Friday: The Dilworth Neighborhood, Myers Park and Another Look at Independence Park.

Sources: Charlotte Magazine: Rooted: Trees Give the City Its Soul; WFAE: Charlotte's Tree Obsession (A Trifling Place, Episode 5); UNC Charlotte Urban Institute: Charlotte's losing its green canopy, despite efforts to save trees; UNC Charlotte Urban Institute: A city of trees, but for how long?