Masses of people at the 1969 Woodstock Music festival stopped by the towering red maple tree a little way off from the main stage. Many scrawled messages on paper scraps or cardboard and attached them to the old tree's trunk.



“SUSAN, MEET YOU HERE SATURDAY 11 A.M., 3 P.M. or 7 P.M.,” read one note left on what later became known as the Message Tree. In another, Candi Cohen was told to meet the girls back at the hotel. Dan wrote on a paper plate to Cindy (with the black hair & sister) that he was sorry he was “too untogether” to ask for her address, but left his number. The tree was literally covered in notes.

In an age before cellphones, the 60-foot red maple tree was the information booth that helped people in the festival connect with each other. The tree has since stood as a tangible link to the historic event that drew more than 400,000 people to Max Yasgur’s dairy farm some 80 miles northwest of New York City over a rainy, chaotic weekend.

The generation-defining Woodstock legend stems not only from the big-name performers such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, but from the massive number of blissed-out hippies who packed in tightly on the muddy hillside in front of the stage. The tree, literally, is in almost every picture that someone took of the stage.

The owners of the renowned concert site were reluctant to lose a living symbol of the community forged on a farm in Bethel, New York, on Aug. 15-18, 1969. But owners of the tree feared that the more than 100-year-old tree, which is in a publicly accessible area, was in danger of falling down. As the Message Tree aged, structural issues and other problems threatened its longevity. In 2015, the decision was made to propagate the tree to preserve its DNA past the dwindling time the Message Tree had left. Finally, on September 25, 2024, 55 years after Woodstock, the tree met its final resting place. There were still nails and pins on the trunk from where things were attached to the tree over time. The on-site museum has some of the surviving messages.

Now that the tree is gone, its meaning will not fade away. The propagated saplings are planted to help the next generation. How do people live in peace? ​What is it about music that creates this shared experience​ and allows a memory you can hold for the rest of your life​? That will be the tree’s legacy.

The tree was a bulletin board with improvised notes on paper plates, and signs on scraps of paper and cardboard, made by friends and strangers hoping to reunite.

The Message tree as it looked before removal.

Looking down from the top of the hill, the tree stands out above the crowd.

In early 2024, the National Park Service announced that Stumpy would be one of 153 cherry trees removed as part of a $113 million project to repair the Tidal Basin's sea wall. Stumpy and the others are poised for a takedown because parts of the sea walls along the west Potomac River and the Tidal Basin, a manmade reservoir near the National Mall, have settled five feet since they were built in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, according to the Park Service. Several factors are contributing to the deterioration including age, poor drainage and rising sea levels due to climate change. As a result, the Tidal Basin waters have been overflowing the wall twice a day at high tide, blocking pedestrian pathways and soaking the cherry blossom tree roots with destructive, brackish sea water.

Poor Stumpy, with a battered, decayed trunk and just a few branches that were just barely hanging on. Like the spindly Charlie Brown Christmas tree. By this time, Stumpy had become a social media celebrity. Stumpy captured our imagination and inspired all of us who feel broken. Aren’t we all damaged in some way? Life is hard, yet we can still bloom and transcend adversity.

Stumpy is descended from the 3,020 cherry trees of 12 different varieties, gifted to the United States in 1912 by Japan as a gesture of friendship. There are now approximately 3,800 cherry trees in Washington DC park.

The National Park Service and National Arboretum took clippings of Stumpy to propagate new cherry trees that are genetically the same as Stumpy. These propagations have been referred to as "baby Stumpies" and "Stumpy 2.0". Stumpy was removed on Friday, May 24, 2024. In mid-August 2024, the National Arboretum announced that the clippings of Stumpy had been successfully cloned, with five little Stumplings. 

A visitor hugs "Stumpy" along the Tidal Basin in Washington DC.

Stumpy draws a crowd at sunrise on March 22. (Kevin Ambrose for The Washington Post)