The Hanley Farm willow tree has been chosen as a state Heritage tree by the Oregon Travel Information Council. The state-sponsored Heritage Tree program is the first of its kind in the nation, and since 1995 has been awarding this designation to trees that have contributed to Oregon’s history.

The Hanley willow certainly fits this description. After the Hanleys settled at the farm in 1857, the willow was one of the earliest trees planted by Martha Hanley. In 1860, former Pony Express rider and family friend Kit Kearny secured a cutting of a weeping willow from Luelling Nursery in Milwaukie, Oregon. He carried it in his saddlebag to the Hanley homestead, stuck into a potato to keep it moist. Martha planted the slip in the moist soil alongside the stone springhouse, where it prospered and eventually provided the name for the farm during this period, "The Willows." Family legend has it that the tree would lose limbs after a family member died, and in fact, the tree fell over not long after Alice Hanley died in 1940. The old trunk remains, and new sprouts continue to spring forth from the base.