This is a cucumber magnolia (Magnolia acuminata), believed to have been planted around 1718. It was already growing here when this was still frontier land — before the Violet Bank house, before the city of Colonial Heights, before the country. Some think the tree was given to the original owner of the home by Thomas Jefferson. But that’s just a rumor. No one knows exactly who planted it.
What is certain is what it witnessed: this rise above the Appomattox River kept becoming important.
- Revolutionary War (1781)
Lafayette’s forces occupied the heights nearby.
Artillery positioned here overlooked British-held Petersburg. - Civil War (1864)
The house beside the tree — Violet Bank — became General Robert E. Lee’s headquarters. From here:- Lee directed part of the Siege of Petersburg
- He heard and then learned of the Crater explosion
- Soldiers gathered, moved, waited
What remains today is one of the largest cucumber trees in the world, a living being approaching three centuries old, with branches that now stretch wider than the house beside it. When you go, notice the scale—especially how low and wide it spreads; the way the modern world presses in around it, and the fact that it is still growing.
