If you’ve ever considered planting a tree, now is the perfect time to do so. Most trees go dormant in winter, making transplanting less shocking.

"There is something a little fantastic," wrote Edmund Schulman in the March 1958 National Geographic, "in the persistent ability of a 4,000-year-old tree to shut up shop almost everywhere ...

That is, this tree is so big you can scarcely look at it all ... and what remained had little value as lumber. It went into shingles, fence posts, grape stakes, and other scrappy products.