Grand Army of the Republic Tree

Some monuments are planted rather than carved. The Grand Army of the Republic—the Union Civil War veterans' organization—marked its presence in Reno with a commemorative tree, a living memorial to the men who had fought to preserve the nation and then helped settle Nevada. Tree-planting was a favored Progressive-era gesture of remembrance, meant to endure as the veterans themselves could not. The old soldiers who dedicated it are gone, and the GAR dissolved with its last member. The tree and its marker remain, a green tribute distinct from the cemetery where the veterans lie.

What the plaque says

This tree was planted in soil from Civil War battlefields and dedicated to the memory of the Grand Army of the Republic by the national commander in chief June on 10, 1913. It was dedicated by Isaac Crist Camp No. 28, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, and Johana Shine Tent No. 82, Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War in Reno, Nevada, October 18, 1969.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Reno — 0.6 mi
  The river crossing the Comstock needed, made a city by the railroad—then reinvented as divorce capital, gambling town, and now tech hub: the Biggest Little City in the World
• Virginia City — 18 mi
  The boomtown that sits on top of the richest silver strike in America—fewer than a thousand people now, on streets built for twenty-five thousand
• Chollar Mine — 18 mi
  A real Comstock silver mine you can still walk into—four hundred feet of original timbered tunnel under C Street, where the work that built a state was done by hand, in the dark
• Sand Harbor — 24 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

More markers nearby

• Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• N.C.O. Railroad Depot – 1910 — 0.5 mi
• Frederik Joseph DeLongchamps — 0.8 mi
• Site of Nevada’s First Public Library — 0.8 mi