Episcopal Great Oak Tree
Jacksonville, Florida

Episcopal Great Oak Tree

The Great Oak at Episcopal High School was a mere sapling when the first European settlers came to North Florida and built permanent homes on the banks of the St. Johns River.

The tree, also known as the Keystone Oak, would have reached substantial size when Mary Packer Cummings and her husband, Charles, built the family estate, Keystone Bluff, in the 1880s. Mrs. Cummings was the daughter of Asa Packer, who built Lehigh Valley Railroad, founded Lehigh University and was governor of Pennsylvania.

When Mary Packer Cummings died in 1912, she bequeathed the twenty-eight-acre Keystone Bluff to St. John’s Episcopal Parish and, in 1921, the church established a boys’ home on the property.

A new bridge allowed access to the area and summer picnics in the tree’s shade became common.

In 1966 Episcopal High School of Jacksonville was established, and the Great Oak has shaded and sheltered students since then.

Its imposing profile embosses yearbooks, appears on school publications and is the namesake for the school’s premier giving circle, The Great Oak Society.

 

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