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The Rose Tree on trellis of wood and iron

The World’s Largest Rose Tree, the 125 year old Tombstone Rose is in bloom!  Spring is the most romantic time to visit Tombstone, an historic silver mining boomtown in southeast Arizona.  Each April, Tombstone’s oldest living resident, the 125-year-old Tombstone Rose Tree, bursts into bloom, perfuming Tombstone with the enchanting scent of violets. 

The Tombstone Rose Tree is the world’s largest rose bush.  In April, it is covered with clusters of fragrant, dime-sized, fully double blooms.  The gnarled trunk is more than fourteen feet in girth, and sturdy boughs are covered with shaggy cinnamon-brown bark. 

The clusters of tiny white roses bloom atop a thick mat of interwoven, thornless canes.  Birds sing in the branches, the wind ruffles the spring green leaves, and dappled light dances on the shady ground. In May the delicate petals cover the ground like a fragrant snowdrift.  In summer, under the arching branches, the courtyard of the Rose Tree Museum and Book Store is cool and refreshing.

The Rose Tree Museum

Located in an historic old adobe building, the Rose Tree Museum has exhibits about Tombstone’s history, mining and ranching heritage.  The artifacts on display are from the collection of one of Tombstone’s original pioneer families, the Macia family.  The Macia family has owned the building, and cared for the famous Tombstone Rose Tree, since 1916.

Burton Devere, grandson of the pioneer Macia family, and his wife Dorothy operate the Rose Tree Museum as a labor of love.  Dorothy says the greatest reward is hearing the exclamations of visitors of all ages when they first step into the courtyard and see the beautiful World’s Largest Rose Tree.   

Planting the Tombstone Rose 

In 1885, Mrs. Amelia Adamson established a boarding house on the site, originally called the Cochise House, later known as the Arcade Hotel (1909 – 1936) and the Rose Tree Inn (1936 – 1953).  In 1885, Mary Gee, a young bride from Scotland, and her husband Henry Gee, a mining engineer, boarded at the Cochise House while their house was being built in Tombstone.  Mary Gee and Amelia Adamson, her landlady, became close friends while Mary stayed at the Cochise House. 

Tombstone was a rough and dusty boomtown, and Mary Gee was homesick for the green hills and lush vegetation of her homeland.  Mary’s relatives in Scotland sent her a trunk full of rooted shrub cuttings to plant in the yard of her new home.  The cuttings traveled by ship from Scotland, around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America, to San Francisco, then overland by stagecoach to Tombstone. 

Mary gave one cutting, a Lady Banks rose, to Amelia Adamson as a token of their friendship.  Together they planted the rose cutting in the courtyard of the Cochise House, now the Rose Tree Museum.    

The Lady Banks Rose

The Tombstone Rose Tree is a white Lady Banks Rose (Rosa banksiae banksiae), which proved to be ideally suited to the high desert climate of Tombstone, Arizona.  A vigorous climbing evergreen rose, the Lady Banks rose is resistant to disease, thornless, drought tolerant and one of the easiest roses to grow. 

The Lady Banks Rose grows quickly, and thrives throughout the southern United States. 

It is an old rose, originally from the mountains of western China, and named for Dorothea Banks, the wife of Sir Joseph Banks.  Banks was a wealthy adventurer and botanist who sailed with Capitain Cook on his first great expedidition on the research ship, HMS Endeavour, in 1768-1771.  Banks collected and cataloged exotic plant specimens, and later served as director of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London.  The Lady Banks Rose was first brought to Kew Gardens from China in 1807.

The World’s Largest Rose Tree

In 1919, Ethel and J. H. “Bert” Macia purchased the Cochise House, then known as the Arcade Hotel.  Bert Macia built a trellis to support and train the rambling rose into an upright tree form.  The Macia family operated property as a hotel from 1919 to 1953.   

In 1934, Robert Ripley stayed at the Arcade Hotel.  His ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’ newspaper column featured the rose that Mary Gee and Amelia Adamson had planted in the courtyard in 1885 as “The World’s Largest Rose Tree.”   At that time the Tombstone Rose Tree covered about 1,750 square feet, one-fourth its present size.  In 1936 the Macias renamed the Arcade Hotel “The Rose Tree Inn” in honor of the now famous rose. 

By the 1950’s the canopy of the Rose Tree had grown to 4,600 square feet.  Tombstone’s Rose Tree is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, and growing on an arbor made of wood and iron, now covers over 8,000 square feet of the courtyard of the Rose Tree Museum.   

According to Dorothy Devere, the Tombstone Rose Tree is never fertilized or sprayed, but is watered generously and pruned each January.  Rooted cuttings of the Rose Tree are available for purchase at the Rose Tree Museum, allowing visitors to plant a bit of Tombstone’s history in their own gardens. 

The Tombstone Rose Tree is real living history.  As Dorothy Devere said, “Tombstone is most famous for its outlaws and lawmen.  They are all gone now, but the 125 year old Tombstone Rose Tree is still here in Tombstone.” The world famous rose tree is alive and doing well, bursting with vitality and growing larger and more beautiful every year. 

The Rose Tree Museum and Book Store is located at the corner of Fourth and Toughnut Streets in Tombstone, one block south of historic Allen Street.  The Museum is open daily from 9AM to 5PM, except Christmas and Thanksgiving. Admission is $5.00 for adults, children 14 and under can visit the Rose Tree and museum free of charge.  Visitors receive a $1 discount on admission to the nearby Tombstone Trolley or Goodenough Mine Tours.  While at the Rose Tree Museum, be sure to ask for a copy of the free brochure “Tombstone 1880’s Museum and Home of the World’s Largest Rose Tree.” 

For more information, or to arrange a wedding under the Rose Tree, call (520) 457-3326.

References:

Bailey, Lynn R.  Tombstone, Arizona “Too Tough to Die”: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Silver Camp; 1878 to 1990.  Tucson: Westernlore Press, 2004.

Devere, Dorothy.  The Lady of the Rose.  Tombstone: Devere Publications, 1993.

Devere, Dorothy. Personal interview.  DATE

“The Story of a Rose.”  Pamphlet located in files of Tombstone Public Library, undated (ca. 1952).

“Tombstone 1880’s Museum and Home of the World’s Largest Rose Tree.”

Rose Tree Museum, undated pamhlet.

Tombstone Restoration Commission. Tombstone’s Historic Locations: Tombstone Map, History and Walking Tour. Tombstone: Tombstone Restoration Commission, 2008.