Aging and ailing, 'Message Tree' at Woodstock concert site is reluctantly cut down

Masses of people at the 1969 Woodstock festival stopped by the towering red maple tree a little ways 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.

Fifty-five years after Woodstock, the Message Tree was cut down under rainy skies Wednesday due to its poor health and safety concerns.

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 operators of the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts feared that the more than 100-year-old tree, which is in a publicly accessible area, was in danger of falling down. They now have plans to honor its legacy.

“It’s like watching a loved one pass,” said Neal Hitch, senior curator at The Museum At Bethel Woods.

In an age before cellphones, the 60-foot (18-meter) tree by the information booth helped people in the festival’s sea of humanity connect with each other. Hitch noted that it 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 (130 kilometers) northwest of New York City over the 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 people who packed in tightly on the muddy hillside in front of the stage.

“This tree, literally, is in almost every picture that someone took of the stage - looking down from the top of the hill, the tree's in the bottom corner. So it is like the thing that has stood the test of time,” Hitch said. “So to see that loss is both nostalgic and melancholy.”

Hitch, speaking on Tuesday, said 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.

While the tree is gone, its meaning will not fade away.

Bethel Woods, which has operated the site for many years, is seeking proposals to create works of art using the salvageable wood. Those works will be exhibited next year at the museum. The site also has several saplings made from grafts from the Message Tree.

Bethel Woods at some point will host a regenerative planting ceremony, and one of those trees could be planted at the site. Plans are not certain yet, but Hitch would like to see it come to fruition.

“There’s this symbolism of planting something that will be the Message Tree for the next generation,” he said.