One-Tank Trip: Visit the Angel Oak Tree, more than 400 years old
JOHNS ISLAND, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - It’s a tree that predates the founding of the United States.
The Angel Oak Tree near Charleston brings in hundreds of thousands visitors every year. Frank Deloach visits frequently.
“I’m here about 200 days a year,” he said.
He sets up his easel near the tree all the time and paints pictures of it. Deloach meets a lot of new people every day.
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“It’s like working in the airport,” he joked. “I love it, it’s very stimulating, I talk to people about art, dinosaurs, all kinds of stuff all day long.”
Every year, more than 400,000 people visit the tree.
Estimates say it’s between 400 and 500 years old.
It’s hard to put in perspective just how big this tree is until you see it for yourself.
Its branches go out way past the trunk, which itself has a circumference of 28 feet.
The tree is more than 60 feet tall.
“I being here as a child. I like 1954 being here with my cousins from Jacksonville,” Deloach said. “I can we stayed here and slept in our sleeping bags under the tree.”
Deloach has been coming back ever since.
Over the past couple of decades, he’s turned these paintings into a job.
“I never planned on it being quite this successful, but I’ve been doing it 23 years, and these are very popular, these big paintings,” he said.
Popular paintings of one popular tree.
It’s free to visit the Angel Oak.
It’s on Johns Island, a little more than 10 miles from downtown Charleston.
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