It was a single tree, growing all by itself in an immense wide-open space. Then along came a drunk driver and knocked it down. Apparently that 1973 accident was the sad end of the Arbre du Tẻnẻrẻ (“tree of Tẻnẻrẻ”) Let’s go back and start at the beginning.
Long before recorded history, North Africa was apparently a lush tropical forest. Then the climate changed. For some reason they rains ceased, and it got drier and drier. Great lakes shrank and eventually dried up. Vegetation that could live with less water replaced the forest. The change continued for hundreds of years until just scattered acacias trees and scrubby shrubs remained on the dry dusty soils of the long-ago lakebed. In time even those trees disappeared until only one survived. It stood alone when 1899 turned into 1900. The old lakebed was then just dry blowing sands that the wind sculpted into beautiful dunes. Desert nomads used the tree as an important landmark on their trade route across the great desert now known as the Sahara.
In the early 1930s the solitary tree was “discovered” written about. A few years later someone dug a well near the tree. They had to go down about 130 feet to find the water. But it was there, and the tree had its roots in it. A single acacia tree spread its green leaves above the dry searing sand dunes of the desert because it had sent its roots deep. It served as a crucial landmark year after year, guiding the camel trains to water. To show what a tenacious survivor this tree was, its nearest neighbor tree was 120 miles away. This acacia had the distinction of being the loneliest tree on the planet.
So after years of hanging on and surviving against all odds, a drunk driver came along and took it out. Those who had been saved by this tree and those who had sat under its shade put the dry remains in a museum and placed it with a scrap metal scripture. It was so famous that even to this day, almost 40 years after its demise, both Google earth and Google Maps mark the spot where it once flourished.