Washington Grove

The City of Rochester’s Washington Grove is a precious fragment of old-growth forest in which ancient trees grow in an uneven glaciated landscape that makes it seem much larger than its actual 26 acres. It is extraordinary to find such a relatively undisturbed patch of forest within a city limits, one open to all as part of a city park.

Washington Grove is an oak-hickory forest situated on the edge of a kame moraine and containing two glacial kettles. Several oak species are present, but the numerous black oaks are especially impressive. Burn-intolerant maple, cherry, sassafras, and tulip trees are now widespread in the forest, probably as a result of the suppression of forest fires by settlers 200 years ago in an area transformed by the construction of the original Erie Canal, which ran nearby. In the 1950s, in response to the loss of once-dominant chestnut trees, students from the nearby elementary school planted many sugar maples. As far as is known, the area has never been cleared and although what appear to be the oldest trees have never been cored to determine their age, a dead one, not particularly large, was aged at over 250 years.