Humans, when we think of history, tend to think of human history: buildings, wars, art, stuff like that. However, another history surrounds us that doesn’t give a damn about humans. In the middle of a swamp in Sagaponack is a remnant of colonial history, a stand of Atlantic white cedar trees, as important and ubiquitous 300 years ago as iPhones are now. In fact, arguably the largest Atlantic white cedar tree in the state, and certainly the largest on Long Island, grows there completely unheralded, and sort of trapped.
In a paper written for the Long Island Botanical Society in 2020, John Turner, a senior conservation policy advocate at the Seatuck Environmental Association, said Atlantic white cedars were used to build and shingle houses, for flooring, barrels, pipe organs, and even water supply pipes before cast-iron piping existed. Tree technology.
Once everywhere, only a few isolated stands remain on Long Island.
“It’s hard to conceive of this now, but they were once along the Gowanus Canal,” Mr. Turner said in a phone call recently. On the South Fork, you can find them near Little Fresh Pond in Southampton and in the Sagg Swamp Preserve. “Remnants of an ancient Atlantic white cedar swamp, currently mostly submerged in the Atlantic Ocean a few meters off the north shore of Montauk Point,” were reported in 2011, Mr. Turner wrote. Sea level rise, sure, but suburban sprawl and habitat loss, the culprit behind the diminution of so much natural history, birds and trees alike, are the main culprits behind their disappearance.
Three groves, actually, remain in the Sagg Swamp Preserve, and Mr. Turner said the tree in question grows on the eastern edge of the middle grove and has what arborists would call a “diameter of nearly 29 inches at breast height.”
Brian Kelley, founder of the Gathering Growth Foundation, which is devoted to documenting “champion trees,” bushwhacked into the preserve this spring to find and photograph the tree. A champion tree is the largest of its species. Atlantic white cedar trees, he says, can live to be over 1,000 years old. He says the grove in Sagaponack, one of only 20 remaining in the state, is not the healthiest he’s seen. “It seems like it’s shrinking a little bit. It’s not as wet or swampy compared to Atlantic white cedar habitat in upstate New York. Usually, you have to go in with waders to see these trees.” Mr. Kelley is on a mission to find the oldest and largest native tree species in New York, and photograph them for a book he’s writing to document these trees before they’re lost.
(He says it’s also possible champion trees are hiding on private properties in East Hampton. If you think you might have one, and want it measured and photographed, email him at [email protected].)
“When I go in there, I never see any young trees,” said Jim Ash, former executive director of the South Fork Natural History Museum. “I see only established old trees. That tells me that something is wrong with the environment there.” Mr. Ash remembers looking at the ancient Montauk cedar swamp that Mr. Turner referred to in his paper. “The rising ocean has taken it. Back in the day, at low tide, you would see the stumps of long dead cedars that were submerged 90 percent of the time. Today, I don’t know if the tide ever gets that far out. Maybe. They were harvested for shingles. You drive around the East End and can still see buildings with cedar shakes on them from Colonial days.”
In fact, Robert Hefner, a former East Hampton Village historic preservation consultant, noted two such buildings that are easy to spot. “There’s no doubt whatsoever that the Gardiner Mill is Atlantic white cedar, and there’s no doubt that the Mulford farmhouse is Atlantic white cedar. We used it for the trim of the Thomas Moran house, but that’s painted over,” he said.
Near the Sagg Swamp stand is a small brook running with orange-tinged water. It’s not polluted. “I think that’s water seeping to the surface through a large collection of magnetite,” Mr. Ash said. Magnetite was known as “bog iron” to early settlers, who would dig it out and use it to make farm tools. “England had a high tax on imports, so harvesting bog iron was a big industry,” he said. The land now preserved by the Nature Conservancy was once owned by John White’s family. On an early summer morning, Mr. White, now 71, stepped over brambles, dead logs, and seas of ferns to find the stand of Atlantic white cedar. “I haven’t been in here in 25 years,” he said, wiping his brow.
“You’re coming up to a cedar there on your right,” he said, ducking under a branch. There is no trail, Route 27 was far enough north to be out of earshot. “When I was a kid,” he said, staring up into the canopy, the air redolent of cedar, “my grandmother sent me back in here to cut down our Christmas tree. It was quiet, full of snow. I looked up and there were maybe a dozen snowy owls in one, and they all flew out.”
“If they were white like that, pale and hunched over, they were probably black-crowned night herons,” Mr. Ash said when told the story. It’s really no matter what species of bird was decorating the stand of Atlantic white cedars that Christmas season 60 years ago. The fact is, the Sagg Swamp holds more mystery than most parcels of land on the South Fork in 2024. It’s the home of a champion cedar tree, bog iron, maybe snowy owls, maybe black-crowned night herons, and stories older than the country.