Delavan's Civil War Muster Tree
Near Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
The sturdy bur oak that stands near here is older than the country it sent men off to fight for. Local accounts hold that it is well over two hundred years old.
During the Civil War, this was Delavan's gathering spot. Local volunteers reported for duty beneath its wide canopy, received their traveling orders, and then walked a single block to the train depot. From there they boarded cars bound for the Union training camps, Camp Randall up in Madison and Camp Utley over in Racine.
Generations of Delavan families can trace an ancestor who stood in this exact shade before heading off to war. People came to call it the Civil War Muster Tree. Age and disease have caught up with it now, but the old oak still marks the place where a small Wisconsin town said its goodbyes.
