Aruba
AA-2026-2941BA
On the image
Somebody pulled the car over for this, because in the 1960s a bent tree was considered a legitimate tourist attraction, provided a guardrail and a paved shoulder confirmed its official status. The tree in question has spent decades arguing with the trade winds and losing, every branch combed permanently towards the same direction like hair that gave up fighting a strong comb. It has become a local celebrity for the same reason a hunched man on a park bench becomes a local character: it stood there long enough, and it never once straightened up to disagree.
The traveller photographing it assumed the wind was a novelty rather than a schedule, not yet understanding that on this island the wind is basically a full-time employee that never takes a day off. The guardrail suggests a road built for exactly this kind of stop, the sort of infrastructure a young Caribbean tourist economy installs the moment it notices visitors will pay to look at something the locals stopped noticing years ago. The ocean waits flatly in the background, doing nothing spectacular, because spectacular was already handled by the tree.
The historian's note
The divi-divi tree, native to Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao, is permanently shaped by the constant easterly trade winds that blow across the ABC islands, forcing new growth to bend and grow only in the leeward direction. By the 1960s the tree had become an unofficial emblem of Aruba, appearing in tourism promotion as the islands began actively developing beach and resort tourism following the decline of the Lago oil refinery's dominance of the local economy.
Roadside pull-offs and guardrails of this kind date to the same period, part of the infrastructure built alongside the coastal highway as private car ownership and rental tourism increased. The tree's wind-sculpted form made it a favoured stop for visiting photographers, who recognised it, correctly, as one of the few natural landmarks distinctive to the island rather than shared with any generic tropical coastline.
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Windswept Divi-Divi Tree by the Roadside, Aruba, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-2941BA. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/windswept-divi-divi-tree-by-the-roadside-aruba-1960s.
@misc{aaAA20262941BA,
title = {Windswept Divi-Divi Tree by the Roadside, Aruba, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-2941BA},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/windswept-divi-divi-tree-by-the-roadside-aruba-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - Windswept Divi-Divi Tree by the Roadside, Aruba, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-2941BA UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/windswept-divi-divi-tree-by-the-roadside-aruba-1960s ER -
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