Residents of Deering have always valued the rural character of their town. They have consistently supported conserving forested land and active farms over commercial development in order to maintain that rural character of the place. They spent a lot of time outside in nature, whether as hunters or just enjoying their natural environment
In 1980 a group of Deering residents set out to locate the largest native and nonnative trees in town. This list was updated in 1985. You can see and download the Big Tree list here.
In 2016 members of the Deering Association began a project of once again updating the list of big trees by locating and documenting those on the old list and adding new records and species. Finding a particular trees that was included on a list thirty-five years ago is a difficult task. At that time it was not possible to add map coordinates to tree locations; there was no smart phones or GPS devices! Locations were given by property owner so even then it is difficult to locate a specific tree in a given parcel. Moreover, many of those properties have passed hands and there is no easily accessible way to find out where a specific parcel is today. Sadly, many of those who reported trees thirty-five years ago have passed away or just do not remember.A small part of our History gone.
In this Big Tree category we present the results of trying to find Deering’s biggest trees. We certainly encourage Deering residents who might know of the location of a particular large tree, or even a tree that is on the list, to contact us.
You can find all the big trees in New Hampshire at the UNH Cooperative Extension Big Tree site.
Engagement of our Community in this project, just as the Community was engaged all those years ago, will be very helpful as we attempt to account for Deering’s largest trees!
DEERING'S NATURAL HISTORY 