Massive ‘Shawshank’ oak tree is no more
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The oak tree that Andy beseeches Red to find if he gets out of prison in “The Shawshank Redemption,” and the one to which fans of that beloved 1994 movie trek on the popular Shawshank Trail, is no longer in the field near the Ohio town of Lucas, between Cleveland and Columbus.
Having been badly damaged by a storm in 2011 and toppled by another one last summer, the remains of the roughly 200-year-old white oak finally were cut up and removed from the private property where it had stood near Malabar Farm State Park.
Until workers took it away in pieces Saturday morning, tourists could stand along Pleasant Hill Road, at a red “Movie Site: The Shawshank Trail” marker, and view the tree, but a sign warned them against trespassing past the fence.
The field’s co-owner Dan Dees said that souvenir-hunters — who long ago made off with most of the stone wall from the movie — were part of why he decided to have the tree removed; his family also wants to farm that land.
But as Andy tells Red in one of the movie’s memorable quotes, “No good thing ever dies.” The site will remain a stop on the selfguided trail, according to Destination Mansfield, the tourism agency that runs it.
That’s fine with Mr. Dees, who sounded a bit frustrated at all the attention when reached by the Post-Gazette Tuesday afternoon. But he understood some of it. “I’m 55 years old. I’ve had this tree all my life.”
While he said he doesn’t yet know what is going to happen to the wood, besides “future furniture projects,” he did say, “I really think people who want a piece of it should have a piece of it” and that he would “do my best” to make that happen.
Thousands of fans have followed the story of the tree on the Shawshank Trail’s Facebook page, and dozens of media outlets have picked it up, and that’s “what we would think would happen,” says Destination Mansfield spokeswoman Jodie Snavely.
“People are really connected with the tree because it was such an iconic part of the movie.”
In one of the the final scenes, Morgan Freeman’s character does make it to the tree, near which he finds an important letter and more that Tim Robbins’ character buried there.
The movie was shot in and around Mansfield (playing Maine) in 1993 — about three hours from Pittsburgh — and the trail to filming sites was created in 2008. People who travel the trail still can see part of the oak tree, surrounded by a fence, on the grounds of the former Ohio State Reformatory, which played Shawshank State Prison, the first of what are now 15 stops on the trail.
Earlier this year, the trail added a new stop — on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the filming site for the movie’s brilliant blue ending that was set in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.
Other signed stops include The Brewer Hotel, the Portland Daily Bugle, Brooks’ Bench, the Road to Buxton, the Shawshank Wood Shop, the Trailways Bus Station, Maine National Bank, the courthouse where Andy is convicted, the pawn shop window and Red’s bus ride to Fort Hancock, Texas.