Pattee Mall - The Great Elm Walk

Photo: Nathaniel C. Sheetz, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)

A stop on Penn State University Park Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.

Look up. The tall trees arching over this mall are American elms, and Penn State has one of the most important stands of them left in the country. Elms were planted on campus starting in 1896, and the population grew to about 300 trees by the year 2000.

Across most of America, Dutch elm disease wiped out these trees in the twentieth century, turning shady elm streets into bare ones. Penn State fought back with a tree care program that dates to the 1940s, plus some help from its isolation in the middle of the state and a fair bit of luck. A newer disease, elm yellows, arrived on campus in 2007, and the university now sprays the trees each spring and summer and replaces lost ones with disease-resistant elms.

In summer the canopy closes overhead into a green tunnel; in winter the branches make a lacework against the sky. Either way, walk slowly. This view is a big part of why people fall for this campus.

Getting here: Keep walking up the mall from Old Botany for a minute, to the stretch where the elms close overhead in front of Pattee Library.

Did you know?: Penn State Magazine has described the campus elms as believed to be the largest stand left in a country ravaged by Dutch elm disease.

Photo op: Stand in the middle of the walk and shoot straight up the mall toward Pattee Library so the elms frame the building like an arch.

More on Wikipedia: Ulmus americana · Dutch elm disease

Pattee Mall - The Great Elm Walk

Stops on this tour