The new park in Missouri City recognizes the history of the Palmer Plantation, where slaves gathered under an oak tree during the 1860s to learn they had been freed.
Missouri City officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony over the weekend to dedicate the city’s new Freedom Tree Park, which honors the history of the area’s enslaved people.
Freedom Tree Park, located along Misty Hollow Drive, was a collaborative effort between the public and private sectors that began in 2018, officials said. The new park was built next to its namesake — a nearly 200-year-old live oak tree where enslaved people on the former Palmer Plantation first learned of their freedom.
The tree’s history began in 1860, when Edward Palmer purchased 640 acres of land in the area from David Bright for $6,000 to create the Palmer Plantation. Nearly five years later, following the Civil War, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston on June 19, 1865, to inform enslaved Texans they had been freed. The occasion is marked by the federal holiday known as Juneteenth…