Tim Ash of A&R Tree Service cuts down the final branch of the nearly 200-year-old oak as it falls across Hill Road near its intersection with Baker Creek Road.

Marcus Larson / News-Register

A large scar is visible where the giant oak split on the Draper Farm side of Highway 99W. Water had seeped into the tree’s core, rotting the inside and making the branches weaker.

Marcus Larson / News-Register

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A man in a hard hat leaned over the edge of the cherry picker bucket and cut off a branch with a chain saw. The limb crashed to the pavement, blocking Hill Road from one white line to the other.

An excavator dragged the branch away and men with leaf blowers and brooms cleared away the debris.

The limb was sawed from a massive Draper Farm oak that split during the night of Aug. 11. One half fell away and the other was left leaning over Hill Road until county workers removed it Thursday.

"We're heartbroken about it," said Katie Draper, who bought the farm with her husband, Denny, from his grandparents. "It's now going to leave a stark hole there to look at the city."

The tree, which the family called the "Old Oak Tree," had been on the property for at least a hundred years, she said. Tim Ash of A&R Tree Service estimated the age to be closer to 200.

Denny Draper's grandmother, Ann Grenfell-Nyseth, grew up on the farm. She remembered the tree from her grade school days, and she is now 90.

Those years of history flashed before Katie Draper when she spotted the fallen half of the tree lying on the ground the morning of Aug. 12. She went outside at 8 a.m. to do yard work and saw the tree's trunk had split in half.

The Drapers immediately called McMinnville Power & Light, because power lines pass nearby, and they were referred to Road Supervisor Pete Lindburg.

Lindburg worried that the standing half of the tree, whose structural integrity had been compromised, would fall on a passing car. Workers assigned to cut it down arrived the following morning.

For the Draper family, loss of the tree meant loss of a key feature of the farm, which they have owned for 20 years now. Katie Draper said their three children used to collect acorns from it to decorate wreaths and centerpieces during the holidays.

She used to look out her kitchen window and see the world through the boughs of the tree, she said. The moon shone through at night, and Mount Hood loomed behind it on clear days.

"More than anything, we enjoyed the beauty of it," she said, noting the tree has been a landmark to citizens of McMinnville as well.

As Katie Draper watched the man in the cherry picker cut up her old oak, she kept saying, "Oh my God, I just can't believe it."