The Lawnmower Tree in 1996

Did I ever tell you about that time on August 28, 1996, when I was leaving Magic Kingdom at closing and there were huge lines for both the monorail and ferryboat, so I decided to hop aboard a resort watercraft and ride it over to Fort Wilderness to explore and see if I could find another route to the parking lot?

I didn’t?

Oh, cool. Well, this one time, on August 28, 1996…

Today, the Lawnmower Tree seems well known, but I am not sure if I’d ever even heard about it in 1996. I just did a search through the archives of the rec.arts.disney.parks newsgroup and I found the earliest post mentioning it was from August 26, 1997. The post was short, so I’ll include it, and the response, here:

Subject: Lawn Mower Tree, any

Date: 8/26/1997

From: na…@aol.com (NAES7)

Hi everyone, I’m headed to WDW in December and in doing some research on some of the points of interest I noticed that is a “tree that has grown around a lawn mower” has anyone seen this? Is it a Disney prop or legitimate?  
 
Sean

Response from Mike Tuchman:

 I have seen it a few years ago.  It is not a prop.  It was apparently
 leaned against a tree (at what is now Fort Wilderness) before Disney
 and forgotten.  The tree grew and started enveloping it.  There is 
 not much of the lawnmower visible anymore.

8/26/1997 posting to rec.arts.disney.parks newsgroup

It is possible that I learned about the Lawnmower Tree over not he General Electric GEnie online service, since I was active there years before I had Internet newsgroup access (and, indeed, before the World Wide Web even existed).

So either I learned about it on GEnie, or I stumbled on to it by accident. In either case, I still had room for at least two images in my digital camera, and I took these photos.

Here’s the sign:

Lawnmower Tree sign on Fort Wilderness on August 28, 1996.

And here is what the lawnmower looked like in 1996:

Lawnmower Tree on Fort Wilderness on August 28, 1996.

I suppose a quick web search today could reveal more details about the story, but back in 1996-1997, not much was really known. I was only reminded of the existence of this tree when I was going through my old photos for articles here on this site. I did a quick search and found that the tree remained, but it was now fenced off and marked much more obviously as a “thing to look at.” I guess anything can become famous on the Internet these days! Even a tree with a lawnmower stuck in it.

Of course, finding this tree was not the reason I boarded that resort boat. I was looking for alternate routes to the parking lot. If I recall, the boat took me to Fort Wilderness (which I’d never been to before, and haven’t gotten back to since). I recall walking around a bit (and finding that tree) before I hopped on a bus. The bus was heading deeper into the campgrounds, so I remember getting off of it and either hopping a return bus, or walking back to the front. Eventually, I made it to the Transportation and Ticket Center parking lot, though I don’t remember how many hops I took to get there.

It was a fun night of exploring and discovery, and something I would continue to do in subsequent trips, hoping to find something else interesting stuck in a tree.

I never did, but at least I found the Lawnmower Tree before it was Internet famous 🙂

Until next time…