When approaching Cranbrook along Lone Pine Road, you’d be forgiven if you thought the street’s name was meant to be ironic. The verdant drive is bound by trees–including many varieties of evergreens. In fact, the name of our southern border road comes from a very specific, lonely tree.

The original lone pine tree, standing in front of the Lone Pine Treasure Shop. Photograph before 1924, from The Afterglow magazine, June 1925. Courtesy of John Marshall/Bloomfield Township Public Library.

Felled in 1924, there was once a great pine tree standing at the corner of Lone Pine Road and North Woodward Avenue. The trunk was nearly two and a half feet in diameter, and it had stood on a small rise in the land along Woodward Avenue for over a century. According to The Birmingham Eccentric reporter Helen Walker:

“Standing alone, the only tree of its kind for acres around, it has long been called the Lone Pine. When it became desirable to name the road that ran so close by the base of the tree, it became Lone Pine Road. When the little house that had been protected by the giant tree from wind and weather for more than a century became a tea house, it took the name of Lone Pine Tea House.”

When Woodward Avenue was widened in the early 1920s many landmarks were moved, including the Lone Pine Tea House. After studies were made to see if moving the pine tree was possible, it was deemed impossible and the tree was chopped down. According to the Eccentric, few removals “roused more genuine sentimental resentment than the removal of the old pine.”

After the tree was removed, one neighbor suggested the namesake road be changed to “Gone Pine Road.”

The Lone Pine Inn and Lone Pine Treasure Shop (far left) after being moved for the widening of Woodward Avenue (foreground). The pine tree seen here is not the original Lone Pine, but perhaps a replacement? Photograph by Arnold Studios, c. 1927. Copyright Cranbrook Archives.

In the same article, plans are presented to plant a new pine on the same corner. I wonder if one of the pines standing there now, in front of the old Lone Pine Tea House isn’t the replacement Lone Pine? (The Tea House building became the Lone Pine Inn after George Booth purchased the building in 1910, and has been a private residence, the offices of Swanson Associates, and is now O’Keefe consultants). With a little bit of whacking to clear the area around the tree, it could be possible to again have a lone pine along the road.

– Kevin Adkisson, 2016-2019 Collections Fellow, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research