A tree that was six years older than the Declaration of Independence died earlier this year at Hollywood Cemetery, but won't be forgotten.

Arborist Jake Van Yahres, whose family business has cared for the trees over the last 30 years, carved the base of the tree into what he described as the cemetery's first "tree headstone."

Van Yahres has previously made recognizable art around Richmond and the state, including an Arthur Ashe mural at Battery Park and one of Kobe Bryant at Randolph Park, but this one was personal.

The tree resided in the area of the cemetery known as Long Bottom, which previously was a lake but was drained and turned into a recreational area.

"In the early 2000s, there used to be a bunch of oak trees that were there," Van Yahres said. "During Hurricane Isabel, a few of them got blown over by the storm, so they fell. Then in 2019, another white oak fell, and there were only two left. Then one of them fell.

"This one, we had basically been keeping our eye on for the last three or four years, and taking pictures and basically doing whatever we could to save it.

"But our best hypothesis is that all the trees were connected, and so as they slowly started falling, this one kind of lost its brothers and sisters."

This tree, though, was particularly unique. Thanks to a tool known as a resistograph, he found that the inside was fully solid, a rarity in trees that old.

He said most trees that old will get cut accidentally at some point, and then decay from the inside.

"It's just wear and tear, but it doesn't necessarily mean the tree is unhealthy," he said. "There's actually a tulip poplar that's probably 100 yards from the white oak that's probably the biggest tree in the cemetery, but it's completely hollow. That happens a lot to older trees."

Van Yahres has a 14-foot portion of the tree at his studio, where he will mill it and then create something with it.

As for the stump, it will stand as a tribute to a tree that has towered above Hollywood Cemetery since before it was founded.

"It's interesting, because it's not just a tree that fell," Van Yahres said. "It has a story to it. So it's cool to give it a proper sendoff."