Black Barn Maple

We have to mention another famous Long Branch tree ‘The Black Barn Maple’.  Although it is not an officially recognized Heritage Tree it is deserving to be.

If trees could talk (*experimental scientific data indicates that they do) the Black Barn Maple, located at the rear of 95 James Street, has witnessed the many trials and tribulations that only a local farm tree could.

When it was a natural sapling in the 1860s, James and Martha Eastwood purchased 200 ha (500 acres) of the Samuel Smith Tract running south of Lake Shore King’s Highway from Etobicoke Creek to about Thirty-First Street.

Included in the sale and just a few hundred meters north of the Black Barn Maple, stood the Colonel Samuel Smith Cabin. The property was vacated when Colonel Sam Smith died in 1826.

The photo shows the Colonel Samuel Smith homestead house at Forty First St. and Lake Shore Blvd. West, originally a log cabin built in 1797, to which extensions and siding were added over the years.

With resources, vision and good ole Canadian pioneer tenacity, James Eastwood resurrected the Colonel Sam Smith Sawmill and forested the rich arboreal land of Oak, Maple and Ash.

The next phase was to seed the newly cleared land and husband an ambitious livestock of horses, chickens, pigs and cattle. The farm was later assumed by James’ son, Robert Eastwood. The Eastwood Park Hotel, his former farmstead became famous for his Shorthorn Cattle receiving Gold medals at the Royal Winter Fair.

To adequately shelter the Eastwood Farms livestock, three barns were raised. The last and the largest, became a welcoming landmark from the Hamilton Highway. It was the Eastwood Black Barn which stood prominently for decades and well up to the early 1960s.  At that time our beloved Black Barn Silver Maple which was just growing south of the Long Branch Black Barn icon, was well established and enjoyed by the family.

View of The Black Barn Maple of Eastwood from 93 James Street. Estimated to be well over 100 years old, this beauty is healthy, vibrant, and full of wildlife. The view of this tree can be enjoyed from James, Forty First, Fortieth and Garden Place.

During the building boom of the 1920s, Eastwood started to sell off his lands for residential development but continued to raise his prized cattle for years later. Luckily, or maybe by fortuitous foresight, our Black Barn Maple was not felled for development but was allowed to mature to be one of Long Branch’s oldest remaining potential Heritage Trees.