...And the Thorns Were Cleared from the Path
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Golden Rain Trees are an iconic part of the New Harmony landscape whose seeds were famously sent to the townsfolk in 1830 by William McClure, a naturalist, geologist and eventual founder of the Working Men’s Institute.
Marguerite Young shares lush and metaphor rich descriptions of the landscape surrounding New Harmony in her poetic “history of two Utopias,” Angel in the Forest, 1945. She writes: “It was good that the Rappites had left the black locusts standing and that the Owenites had planted those golden rain trees, “the fastest growing tree in the world” much used in chinese graveyards because of the lantern shaped leaves. Otherwise both utopias might have been forgotten, though advertised as remembered. Utopias of the past seemed, in spite of their shade trees, not so tangible…”