Arrest made in felling of Connecticut’s ‘door tree’

HAMDEN, Conn. – Connecticut authorities say the person responsible for cutting down a distinctive tree has been arrested.

The New Haven-based Regional Water Authority announced the arrest Tuesday. No name was released.

The authority said the Door Tree in Hamden, a 200-year-old white oak that grew in a “distinctive doorway-like arch,” had been cut down with a chainsaw on July 18.

The Regional Water Authority owns the land where the tree stood.

David Johnson, Hamden’s municipal historian and a member of the Hamden Historical Society which first discovered the tree had been felled, called it a “terrible act of thoughtless vandalism.”

The historical society says the tree was first photographed in 1898 and was featured in works including Ripley’s “Believe It or Not.”