The Survivor Tree
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States
The American elm that outlived the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, now the living heart of the national memorial, whose seedlings are planted at sites of violence across the country.
In the ruins of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building after the April 19, 1995 bombing, investigators found one tree still standing: an American elm in a parking lot across the street, burned and shredded, alive. The memorial that grew around the site kept the elm at its center, and "the Survivor Tree" became the emblem of the whole ground: resilience described by a living body rather than a stone.
The practice attached to it is real and ongoing. Every year on the anniversary the community gathers beneath it, and seedlings propagated from the tree are gifted and planted at communities that have since suffered violence, a lineage of witness spreading outward from Oklahoma City. Written tributes hang at its fence after national tragedies.
Visiting
The tree stands in the Oklahoma City National Memorial at 620 N Harvey Ave; the outdoor memorial is open daily with no admission. See memorialmuseum.org.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oklahoma_City_Memorial_Survivor_Tree.JPG), CC BY-SA.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories