Preservationists are working to extend the life of a rare Revolutionary War 'witness tree'

EUTAW SPRINGS, S.C. (AP) — Standing beneath the spreading branches of a massive live oak, historian Garrison Marcoux tries to imagine what this scarred, struggling tree saw 245 years ago.

Did one of the British soldiers encamped at this South Carolina crossroad near the end of the Revolutionary War sit in the oak's shade to recuperate from the series of attacks in American Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene's “war of posts?” Did he or his comrades take cover behind its then slender trunk and fire at the onrushing Continental Army?

Perhaps a soldier took his last breath beneath its canopy, watering its roots with his blood.

“I’m a spiritual person,” Marcoux, with the South Carolina Battlefield Preservation Trust, said as workers clamber among the limbs above. “To say that a place that experienced a lot of violence and intense emotion and things like that doesn’t hold some kind of energy is probably not likely. I think that energy exists where something like this happened.”

This is a “witness tree.” And it now faces its own fight for survival.

After multiple attempts to stave off its death over the decades, it is being choked by the chains and cables meant to support it. Preservationists are working to save this unique, living reminder of an oft-overshadowed chapter in U.S. history.

Arborists estimate that the tree was about 50 years old on Sept. 8, 1781, when British and colonial forces clashed during the Battle of Eutaw Springs — considered by historians to be the last open field engagement of the American Revolution.

“It’s very rare to have a witness tree, especially from the Revolutionary War,” Marcoux said on a recent sultry morning as gnats and mosquitoes buzzed around his head. “To have the tree that witnessed this battle and still standing is short of a miracle.”

Among the officers were famous names like Lt. Col. Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee and Brig. Gen. Francis Marion, better known as the “Swamp Fox.”

About 2,500 Americans attacked the roughly 2,000 British and Loyalist troops camped around a fortified brick house. Greene, who had a horse shot out from under him during the battle, called Eutaw Springs “by far, the hottest action I ever saw, and the most bloody for the numbers engaged.”

Lt. Col. Alexander Stewart, the British field commander that day, later wrote to Gen. Charles Lord Cornwallis, “I assure you the Action was bloody and obstinate.”

There were 1,461 killed, wounded, captured or missing. Both sides would claim victory.

“That tree probably took a few lead balls itself,” says arborist Aron Landsaw.

The combatants would move on. The oak remained — and faced several more battles of its own.

Hung with swaying Spanish moss, its branches festooned with bright-green resurrection fern, the tree reaches 45 feet (13.7 meters) into the sky, its canopy spreading about 130 feet (40 meters). Its trunk is 72 inches (1.83 meters) in diameter at breast height.

The twin springs that gave the Revolutionary War battle its name are no more, inundated by the 1940s project that flooded the Santee River basin for hydroelectric power and flood control. Development in the 1960s swallowed up much of what the lake project spared.

The tree survived it all.

Then, about 50 years ago, lightning struck the oak’s crotch, splitting the tree nearly in two. Workers lashed the broad branches together with steel cables and chains.

But the mechanisms that saved the oak are now slowly killing it.

As the tree grew, the metal bands cut into the trunk and branches, in some places disappearing beneath a scar-like covering of bark.

“The chains and cables are actually choking it out,” says Landsaw. “It can’t pull nutrients up from the soil.”

Preservationists hope to reverse that.

South Carolina 250 and the American Battlefield Trust joined forces to hire New York state-based SavATree for the project as the U.S. marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Crews recently used a supersonic air tool to de-compact the ground around the tree’s roots, then injected a kelp mixture to add nutrients to the soil. The day of Marcoux’s visit, SavATree workers hammered little blunt lightning rods into the main branches, connecting them with shiny copper cables that converge on a longer copper rod pounded deep into the ground about 10 feet (3 meters) from the trunk.

“If lightning does hit it, it’ll run down the copper cables and dissipate into the ground,” says Landsaw, a consulting arborist with SavATree.

Next, workers will install new cables, bolted into the five main branches, to stabilize the tree before removing the old supports.

“There’s going to be a center hub in the middle that connects all these cables and allows the tree to sway with the wind and move around when it needs to,” Landsaw explains.

Landsaw says this is the most significant project he's ever worked on.

While he can't promise the tree will live another three centuries, Landsaw is confident it will be around to inspire new generations of Americans.

“We’re focusing on another 100 years at least,” he says. “Hopefully longer.”

The story has been updated to correct that SavATree is based in New York state, not Maryland.

Jake Love, left, and Bryce Whitney of SavATree pound a copper lightning rod into the ground beside a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

Jake Love, left, and Bryce Whitney of SavATree pound a copper lightning rod into the ground beside a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

Spanish moss sways among the steel cables installed around 50 years ago to help stabilize a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

The sun rises behind a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

Andrew Giordano, plant and tree health care specialist, installs copper lightning rod cable in the branches of a Revolutionary War "witness tree" at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, S.C., historic site on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting Monday ahead of a week packed with potentially market-moving events. The areas of the bond market that the U.S. Treasury Department is trying to calm down, meanwhile, eased a bit.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.4% and pulled a bit further from its all-time high set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 77 points, or 0.1%, as of 11:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.7% lower.

Tech stocks led the way downward following big swings through the summer on worries that the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology sent prices too high and that the huge demand for AI chips won’t be sustainable if they don’t produce enough profits.

Chip giant Nvidia has been a tremendous winner of the AI boom and become Wall Street’s largest and most influential stock because of it. It will deliver its latest quarterly earnings report on Wednesday, which could dictate the next big move for AI-related stocks.

Nvidia sank 2.6% and was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500, where the majority of stocks rose. Drops of 7.2% for Micron Technology and 1.9% for Broadcom also helped drag the index lower.

The other big factor moving stocks recently has been the bond market, where longer-term Treasury yields climbed through the summer on worries about high inflation, huge government debts and other factors. High yields make it more expensive for everyone to borrow, not just the government, and have already been pushing up mortgage rates and hurting the housing industry.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced a surprise move last week to increase the size of planned buybacks of Treasurys, which could help contain the rise in yields for 10- and 30-year Treasurys. But analysts warned the move may have only a limited effect because of how small the size of the buybacks are and how they do not fix the fundamental problems of too-high debt for the U.S. government and expensive oil prices because of the war with Iran.

On Monday, the yield of the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.70% from 4.74% late Friday and is back below where it was late Tuesday, before the U.S. Treasury Department made its surprise announcement.

Helping to bring yields down on Monday was a drop in oil prices. Brent crude fell 1.9% to $90.95 per barrel.

Last month it zigzagged between $72 and $102 as hopes rose and fell that the United States and Iran could reach a deal that would allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again. That was even though the United States was preparing to announce new sanctions on Iran, which helped drag the value of Iran's currency to a record low.

Despite Monday's easing of yields, analysts warn the U.S. government’s attempts to influence the bond market could ultimately mean higher pressure on inflation. Inflation already is higher than nearly everyone would like and has been for years.

That raises the pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise the federal funds rate, which affects very short-term overnight loans. When the Fed raises that rate, it could help keep a lid on inflation by trying to slow the overall economy and undercutting prices for stocks and other investments.

The Fed’s new chairman, Kevin Warsh, is set to deliver a speech on Friday at an economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The mountain setting has been the backdrop for major Fed policy announcements in the past, but investors are unsure of what they may get from Warsh this time around.

Warsh has insisted that he wants to give financial markets fewer clues about what the Fed will do with interest rates, hoping that markets react more to incoming data about the economy and inflation than to what the Fed is signaling.

But with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announcing his move last week, Warsh now holds the ball, according to economists at Bank of America. Expectations are high among investors for Warsh to talk about inflation and how the Fed could potentially react, and a failure to deliver could lead to bond yields jumping, they said.

In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped around much of the world. South Korea’s Kospi fell 3.1%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1.9% for two of the biggest moves.

Seoul has been home to some of the world’s sharpest swings this summer because it is dominated by two tech titans benefiting from the AI boom, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

AP Business Writers Michelle Chapman and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

Options traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Specialists Dilip Patel, right, and Dylan Halvorsen work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A person walks in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

People stand in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A person walks by an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

A surveyor works in front of a stock market chart Monday, Aug. 24, 2026 in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)