(CNN) — In May 1989, a bizarre murder attempt in Austin, Texas, gripped the nation and made worldwide news. The details of the case were unusual, and unlike anything police had seen before. The victim? Austin’s oldest resident, a nearly 600-year-old tree known as Treaty Oak.
Treaty Oak is a spectacular specimen. It is centuries older than the city it resides in and stretches out to a spread of nearly 100 feet. In the 1920s, the American Forestry Association named the Treaty Oak the most perfect specimen of a tree in North America. And thanks to a citywide fundraiser in the 1930s, the tree even owns the park it lives on.
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