Town is rooted in tree's history
RUTLAND -- When folks in this hilly little bedroom community tell you they live in central Massachusetts, they mean it literally. As in the exact center of the Commonwealth. If you doubt them, they'll point you straight toward the Central Tree.
The 25-foot red maple, surrounded by a modest split-rail fence and marked by a wooden plaque proclaiming it the "Geographical Center of Massachusetts," stands on a tiny rectangle of town land on Central Tree Road, a quarter of a mile from the entrance to the 109-house Central Tree Estates. You'd probably miss it if you drove quickly along the winding lane, and mistake it for a part of Mark and Jill Eckhardt's front yard.
"I've had people stop and ask me, `Do you know where the Central Tree is?' " says Mark Eckhardt, a project executive for
The leafy marker, which is the third Central Tree to grace the same spot, has experienced something of a renaissance over the past few years. In 1998, after a local naming contest, the town opened its new Central Tree Middle School. (The building is on Main Street, however, not Central Tree Road.)
In 2000, members of the Rutland Fire Department began sporting shoulder emblems depicting the tree. And in January, the local Council on Aging renamed its newsletter "The Central Tree Senior News."
"This is ground zero," says a smiling Mark Eckhardt as he sits in the kitchen of his family's two-story colonial home.
And never mind that there appears to be no record here of any specific survey determining that this particular spot on the eastern slope of Muschopauge Hill is indeed the geographic center of the Bay State. At the Rutland Historical Society -- where you can purchase blankets, plates, and note cards depicting the Central Tree -- written accounts refer vaguely to a survey of what was then called the Hardwick Turnpike during the "early days" of the town, which was incorporated in 1722.
"No one has ever challenged us," says the society's curator, Irene Amsden. "And if they did, we'd tell them they were wrong."
Local belief in the centricity of the Central Tree runs deep. "People here have always said it is the center of the state," says Ugo Alinovi, who has lived in Rutland for all of his 83 years and who has served as police chief. "But I don't know where that information came from. No one does."
The Central Tree gets no help from the Massachusetts Geographic Information System, the state agency that collects and disseminates geographic data. Says Katie Ford, spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, of which MassGIS is part: "There are many ways to determine the center of the state, although we haven't done that. One way to do it is to take a cardboard cutout of Massachusetts, set it on a point, and see where it balances. If you did that, the center of the state would be somewhere in Rutland. But whether a particular tree is the central point, we can't answer that."
The news is worse for the Central Tree at the US Geological Survey. In a report on geographical features published in 1969 and revised in 2001, the agency places the geographic center of Massachusetts at an unspecified point in the "north part of the city of Worcester." But the report points out that this position is approximate, and states, like Ford, that there is no generally accepted definition of a geographic center.
"Determining the center depends on the definition you use," says Robert Johnson, a USGS geographer. "Are you just including land area? Are you including inland water? Are you including offshore islands? There are a lot of caveats."
No one knows the methodology used in the alleged "early days" survey that supposedly consecrated the Central Tree. But a lot of folks in Rutland will tell you that the tree is nevertheless the town's sole claim to fame since the Rutland state sanitorium, noted for its treatment of tuberculosis, discharged its last patient during the mid-1960s. And in a semirural community where the population has increased from 4,852 to 7,499 since 1990, it may represent something more than mere bragging rights.
"As this charming little town has gotten bigger, a lot of people have worried about it losing its character," Jill Eckhardt, a physical therapist, says from her home, which overlooks the maple. "To them, the tree preserves the old character that they miss." (It is Eckhardt who plants the daffodils and day lilies that adorn the Central Tree's base.)
Actually, there have been Central Trees. The current maple dates to 1980, when it replaced a sickly sycamore that had been planted in 1975 and that had lasted only about a year. The sycamore itself had replaced an aging and diseased elm tree that had been removed in 1966. (Thus there was no tree between 1966 and 1975, as well as between 1976 and 1980.) This tree, often referred to as the Central Elm, is considered the town's Holy Grail. Three small pieces of it, along with a goblet that was made from its wood, are preserved at the Rutland Historical Society.
The Central Elm survived the infamous 1953 Worcester Tornado, and as far as Sherry Blair is concerned, the spot has remained something of a beacon for foul atmospheric conditions. "I think it attracts bad weather," says Blair, who, with her husband, Joel, and their three children, lives next door to the Eckhardts. "We get two to three more inches of snow up here than at the bottom of the hill," she says, pointing a half-mile down Central Tree Road toward the Rutland/Holden town line. "And when it rains at the bottom of the hill, it snows up here. People laugh, but it's true."
Blair is also proud of her proximity to the out-of-the-way local icon that Rutlanders doggedly believe is the middle of all things Massachusetts. "I can tell people that I live as close to the center of the state as you can get," she says, and then adds quickly: "Without, of course, living in the tree."
"Discoveries" appears regularly. Ideas for subject matter -- unusual people, places, events, etc. -- are welcome. Nathan Cobb can be reached at cobb@globe.com or at 617-929-7266. 
