Following a recent severe storm on Sept. 25, members of the Tumwater Parks & Recreation Department announced the historic Davis Meeker Garry oak tree at the Olympia Regional Airport lost some of its branches in an Oct. 9 post on the official City of Tumwater Mayor’s Office Facebook page.
“Staff collected branches, keeping some for potential distribution in recognition of the historic and cultural significance of the tree,” Tumwater Mayor Leatta Dahlhoff stated in the post. “As all this was going on, arborists also arrived to begin assessing the condition of the tree. That assessment and assembling of information continues.”
At a Tumwater Historic Preservation Committee meeting on Thursday, Oct. 15, Tumwater Parks & Recreation Department Director Chuck Denney stated that two large branches broke off the tree, but no injuries or property damage was reported.
City staff are now working with Todd Prager & Associates on a new tree assessment according to the historic preservation committee’s meeting agenda report. The assessment is still ongoing, and more updates will be provided in the future.
The Davis Meeker Garry Oak is a 400-year-old Oregon white oak, widely recognized for its cultural significance. It is listed on the Tumwater Register of Historic Places.
Assessments of the tree’s condition first started in 2023 after an 18-inch-diameter branch fell from the tree in the spring of 2023, landing partly in the southbound lane of Old Highway 99. While no one was injured, the incident raised safety and liability concerns for the city.
In 2024, former Tumwater Mayor Debbie Sullivan cited the tree’s poor health and high risk for accidents to use an executive action to have the tree cut down, but faced backlash from locals who formed the Save the Davis Meeker Garry Oak group, filing emergency litigation to put the mayor’s executive order on hold.
At the end of 2025, a Thurston County judge ruled the City of Tumwater cannot cut the tree down without approval of the Tumwater Historic Preservation Committee as previously reported by The Chronicle.
Elsewhere in Tumwater, a joint meeting between the Tumwater City Council and Tumwater School District was scheduled for last Thursday, but was cancelled due to a lack of a quorum according to an Oct. 14 City of Tumwater Mayor’s Office Facebook post.
“We were disappointed and still hope to have this meeting happen. The community wins when the Council and the School Board sit down together to talk about our shared interest in doing good for Tumwater,” Dahlhoff stated in the post.
Planned discussion items at the cancelled meeting include details on the effectiveness of the Tumwater Police Department school resource officer program, along with a look at the upcoming budgets for both the city and school district to discuss ways to improve life for Tumwater residents.
“We had hoped to gain insights and share ideas together. This meeting was cancelled due to lack of participation by the district, and only shortly before we were on track to talk,” Dahlhoff added. “I do not know what happened. We can still fix this. The city will reach out again and I hope we can create a trend of working together.”
