Golden – A massive cottonwood – thought to be more than 200 years old – can’t escape what some say is its shady past.
Known locally as “the hanging tree,” the 8-foot-diameter cottonwood and the surrounding Vanover Park were named for a drunken saloon keeper who shot up the town and was strung up by vigilantes back in 1859.
The tottering tree is showing its age and has a date in September with the woodsman’s ax.
Its roots are rotten, half of its canopy bit the dust several years ago, decay ravages the remaining limbs and trunk, and squirrels cavort in its hollows.
From 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Golden residents will gather to say goodbye to what city forester Dave High said may be “the biggest, oldest tree that most people in Golden will ever see.”
“We will give it a fitting wake,” said city historian Rick Gardner, who will read a recently discovered letter that he promises will “shed new light” on what happened to barkeep Edgar Vanover and on Golden’s role in his demise.
Children from nearby summer camps and day-care centers have written messages to the tree on yellow ribbons, which hang on the tree’s branches.
“I said I was sorry it’s getting cut down and wish it was still alive,” said 8-year-old Kamran Shahbaz.
Though Cheyenne and other tribes rested in its shade, the tree’s notoriety is linked with Vanover, who arrived in Golden in 1859 and opened a saloon.
Vanover had a habit of getting drunk and shooting at people.
“He reportedly was very pleasant when he was sober,” Gardner said. “When he was drunk, he was quite dangerous.”
On the day he was hanged, Vanover got into an argument with his saloon partners and then roamed the town attempting to kill several people.
By nightfall, although Vanover had failed to shoot anyone, Gardner said, a group of men decided Vanover was too dangerous to have around.
With no jail, no police and no courts, the townspeople took it upon themselves to hand out frontier justice.
The lynching, Gardner said, “was a pre-emptory act of vigilante justice. He was hanged for his potential, but he didn’t actually kill someone.”
There’s a difference of opinion about whether Vanover was hanged from the cottonwood or from a nearby butcher’s gallows.
Jerry Hodgden, a longtime parks board member who organized the tree celebration, said the tree “has been somewhat defamed” by the legend.
“This tree may have been an innocent witness to a lynching … but was in no way a party to it,” Hodgden said.
Gardner said some documents indicate the noose was slung over a branch of the cottonwood.
Whichever site led Vanover to the promised land, Gardner said, “the tree was definitely one of the last things he saw.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
Pomp, ceremony for farewell
Sunday’s event near the Ford Street bridge over Clear Creek will feature music, speeches, poetry, skits, artwork and the tree’s designation as Golden’s “oldest living landmark.”
