Other oaks are named for historic figures such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, commemorated for creating the WPA (Works Progress Administration) that put men to work on major projects throughout America after the Great Depression. In City Park, the WPA built streets, lagoons, bridges, golf courses, a stadium and several buildings. A 600-year-old live oak, the largest and oldest in the park, is named for John McDonogh, a wealthy planter who willed 610,000 acres to school children in New Orleans and Baltimore. A100-acre woodland included in his bequest became a public park that eventually expanded into the present, 1500-acre City Park

In McDonogh's day City Park's live oak grove was the setting hot-blooded citizens chose for resolving their affaires d'honneur. Participants often counted out their paces between the Dueling Oak alongside the park's New Orleans Museum of Art, and its twin - lost to hurricane winds in 1949. As wounded men lay on the ground, they may have been reminded of the better life to come by glimpses of resurrection fern, one of two plants hosted by live oaks (the other is Spanish moss), but nourished by the air. The prolific fern withers during dry spells and "resurrects" after a rain.

The Walking Oak, behind the bandstand