Highland Hall Moon Tree

This afternoon we decided to get out of the house for a bit, and go see if we could find the Moon sycamore tree in Hollidaysburg. It was sunny outside, but very windy when we located Highland Hall.

Highland Hall, now shuttered with a large “For Lease” sign on the property.

Our camera was set-up on what was the base of the “Pioneer Family” statue.

The Moon sycamore, now 35 years old, looks to be healthy.

Base of the “Pioneer Family” statue on the left and Moon sycamore on the right. We discovered a trashy little geocache tucked under one corner of the base as we were leaving. Driving out of town to our next stop on our trip, we discovered where the statue has been moved to outside the court house, just a few blocks away from Highland Hall.

The Mystery of the Missing Moon Trees

via wired
 
“15 years after NASA astronomer David Williams started searching for them, hundreds of trees grown from space-faring seeds are still missing. The moon trees, whose seeds circled the moon 34 times in Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa’s pocket, were welcomed back to Earth with great fanfare in 1971. One was planted in Washington Square in Philadelphia as part of the 1975 bicentennial celebrations. Another took root at the White House. Several found homes at state capitals and space-related sites around the country. Then-president Gerald Ford called the trees ‘living symbol[s] of our spectacular human and scientific achievements.’ And then, mysteriously, everyone seemed to forget about them.”

Read the rest here, visit his site here. Fascinating; a moon tree is less than an hour away in Hollidaysburg, PA.