2002 LOCAL NEWS: SOLID AS OAK VIGIL TO SAVE TREE LASTS WEEKS.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Staff Writer

STEVENSON RANCH - Very few people had ever seen The Tree.

Then - overnight - it was national news. Volunteers climbed its sturdy trunk, vowing to stay until it was saved.

Tree activists from all over Southern California came to rally to save the 400-year-old oak, which Santa Clarita Valley schoolchildren named ``Old Glory,'' standing in the path of progress in a fast-growing suburb called Stevenson Ranch.

The 70-foot-tall oak became a symbol for residents of a once-rural valley who were sick and tired of seeing groves of oaks toppled, hillsides bulldozed and streambeds sided with concrete.

``I don't want them to cut it down,'' said 10-year-old Matthew Zubal of Stevenson Ranch. ``They've cut all the other trees down.''

The irony was that most of the families rallying for Old Glory lived in the housing tracts that had replaced meadows and oak groves and rolling hills.

Still, as 2002 drew to an end, the battle drew hundreds to Pico Canyon to save the oak - a tree that sprouted from an acorn dropped long before George Washington was born, a sapling that grew strong in a narrow canyon where, centuries later, Los Angeles County officials would decide a highway should run.

The standoff continued through the end of the year. County officials blinked - deciding the tree would not be bulldozed but moved, a process that will take about five months, according to arborists. But protesters didn't budge, insisting that moving such a giant would kill it - maybe not right away, but within a few years.

The focal point of the oak tree saga was John Quigley, a 42-year-old man from Pacific Palisades who crafted a rudimentary treehouse 60 feet off the ground in the boughs of Old Glory. Cell phone in hand, Quigley refused to budge as heavy machinery came close to bulldoze the oak.

``They will have to be prepared to come up and get me,'' said Quigley, when threatened with arrest.

Quigley held his post when county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich suggested moving the 70-foot-high tree. Such a move had never been attempted on a tree so large, and experts argued about whether Old Glory would survive.

``I don't understand why they can't put a road around the tree,'' said Charles Ennis, a tree surgeon who doubts the tree could survive relocation. ``If they can get someone to the moon, they can build a road around that tree.''

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Sheriff's deputies at Stevenson Ranch in the Santa Clarita Valley watch the people who are keeping a vigil over a 400-year-old oak tree they want road builders to leave alone.

(2 -- color) John Quigley, a 42-year-old man from Pacific Palisades who crafted a platform 60 feet up in the oak tree, has been living there for weeks to keep road builders away.

David R. Crane/Staff Photographer