Remembering Ellie the Elm, ca. 1876 — 2026
Waterville is known as the Elm City, after the tall, graceful trees resembling giant, up-turned flower vases, which once lined the city’s downtown streets. But six decades ago, most of those trees had to be felled due to Dutch Elm Disease, a fungus carried by elm bark beetles that gradually kills the tree.
A few trees survived, thanks to some natural resistance to the fungus or isolation from other elms, but now the last known specimen in the City of Waterville has died. She was Ellie the Elm. So named by Mike Roy, Waterville’s former, long-serving and now retired, city manager, she has stood sentinel outside City Hall for roughly a century and a half, the oldest living thing in the city.
She was probably there for nation’s centennial. She may even have been around for the end of the Civil War and certainly for all the wars since. She was there when Waterville became a city in 1888 and when it dedicated its new city hall fourteen years later. Her exact age will remain a mystery until she is cut down, likely before this article hits print, and her growth rings are counted.
Yet from death comes new life. After Ellie is cut down, her trunk and roots excavated, and the soil remediated, the City will plant a fir tree in her place. Each December, this conifer will become a living Christmas tree, eliminating the need to cut a tree somewhere else and have it trucked in and “planted” in Castonguay Square in for the season.
Ellie herself will not be forgotten. Some of her wood will be salvaged to build chairs and benches or to use in art projects. A plaque may be installed in her in her honor. And long will she live in the hearts of downtown denizens who appreciated the abundant shade her leaves offered and the elegant addition to the city’s skyline that her curved crown provided as it towered over the surrounding buildings.
The author thanks Linda Woods of the Elm City Tree Task Force and Serena Sanborn of Waterville Creates for their assistance in preparing this article.
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