El Palo Alto

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A tree with slightly bare top in the background, blue sky, large worn-out railroad trestle in front
El Palo Alto, circa 2004

El Palo Alto (Spanish: 'the tall stick'[1]) is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) located on the banks of San Francisquito Creek in Palo Alto, California, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. The namesake of the city and a historical landmark, El Palo Alto is Script error: No such module "age". years old and stands Script error: No such module "convert". tall.

Before European arrival, the land around El Palo Alto was home to the Ohlone Native Americans. Local folklore holds that El Palo Alto was a rest stop for the first European expedition that discovered San Francisco Bay, led by Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá in 1769. The tree became widely known with the early-1850s establishment of a highway between San Francisco and San Jose, and as a landmark along the San Francisco–San Jose railroad, construction of which passed the tree in 1863. In 1876, Leland Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University along with his wife Jane Lathrop Stanford, purchased land near El Palo Alto.[2]

Early images and accounts indicate that El Palo Alto once had two trunks. It lost one trunk before 1883—the exact date is unknown—perhaps due to heavy rainfall and erosion of the riverbank. Fearing the tree's total loss, Leland Stanford directed that the riverbank be reinforced with a wooden bulkhead, which was replaced with concrete abutments in 1904 and again in 1911. Coal soot from steam locomotives passing below the tree suffocated the leaves of the tree's upper limbs; nearby wells lowered the water table, and by the late 1920s the tree was declared moribund. Although it has decreased in stature by some Template:Cvt since the late 1800s, El Palo Alto was ultimately saved by the continuous preservation efforts of the city, local arborists, Stanford University, and Southern Pacific (the owner of the adjacent railroad); a 1997 appraisal concluded that the tree would "persevere and grow for centuries to come". El Palo Alto is featured prominently on the City of Palo Alto logo and the Stanford University seal, and is recognized by the National Arborist Association and International Society of Arboriculture as a tree of historical importance.

Name and background

El Palo Alto is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), a giant and long-lived tree species only found near the North American Pacific coast.[3] The redwood has been California's official state tree since 1937.[4] The world's tallest trees are coast redwoods, with the record holder, Hyperion, reaching Template:Cvt.[3][5] El Palo Alto is not so tall, at about Template:Cvt[6] as of 2021Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters"., down from Template:Cvt in the 19th century.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". At Script error: No such module "age". years,[7] nor is El Palo Alto particularly old; the longest-lived redwoods may approach 2,500 years in age.[1] Although today there are thousands of redwoods in the city of Palo Alto, El Palo Alto is one of only a few not planted by humans.[8] Redwoods generally require wet climates like those found close to the coast,[1] but El Palo Alto is much further inland, close to Palo Alto's northern border with Menlo Park.[9] The tree's location next to San Francisquito Creek provided it the necessary water to survive.[1]

History

El Palo Alto germinated around AD 940, when the San Francisco Peninsula was populated by the Ohlone people, one of the indigenous peoples of California. The tree is thus contemporaneous with the Viking Age, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in China, or the Fatimid Caliphate in the Islamic world.[10]

Prior to European contact, the Ramaytush speaking subgroup of the Ohlone people lived near to the tree, in the village of Puichon.[11]

Portolá's expedition

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Before conquest by Spanish missionaries in the 18th century, the land around El Palo Alto was home to the Ohlone.[1] According to traditional history, El Palo Alto was the campsite of Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá's menScript error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". between November 6 and 11, 1769.[12] Portolá was traveling north up the California coast from Mexico in search of Monterey Bay, but failed to identify it. Nourished by Ohlone natives, the expedition continued north and on November 1 were greeted with the expanse of the San Francisco Bay.[13] They traveled southwest and arrived at San Francisquito Creek on November 6, 1769, where they camped until November 11.[12]

Visiting the bay in 1774, Father Francisco Palóu came upon a large tree on the creek, considered its location suitable for a new mission, and erected a wooden cross near it. His diary entry indicated the location of Portolá's camp as nearby and is the tree's first appearance in writing.[12] In 1776,[14] Juan Bautista de Anza and Father Pedro Font visited the tree and concluded the creek's flow was too unreliable, instead founding the Mission Santa Clara de Asís—modern day Santa Clara—Template:Cvt to the southeast.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Font measured the tree with a graphometer: fifty varas (137 feet; 42 m) high and 5.5 varas (15 feet; 3 m) around at the base, noting that soldiers had told him there were larger ones in the mountains.[14]Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". A 1777 map of the bay by Font indicated a large tree on San Francisquito Creek.[12]

Most evidence in the past suggested that El Palo Alto was not the actual tree in Font's map or referenced by early Spanish diarists, who recorded their travels in detail but made no mention of a tree with twin trunks.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Local historian Steve Staiger said that Portolá's camp may have been under a tree further downstream, later felled by a Spanish military engineer to make a bridge.[1] Two candidates for the landmark tree, elsewhere along the creek, fell in 1852Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". and 1911.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".[15][16]

Early landmark

In July 1850, a highway from San Francisco in the north to San Jose to the south was ordered to be built. Previous travelers took narrow trails on horseback or slightly wider tracks on oxcart; it was joked that the road between the two cities was "three miles wide".[17] The highway passed close to El Palo Alto and likely brought it to prominence.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". The tree was nearly cut down in 1850, but was saved by a timely shipment of lumber.[18]

Script error: No such module "Multiple image". El Palo Alto was first known as the Palos Colorados,[18] roughly meaning 'red trees'.[1] The earliest known reference to the name "Palo Alto" dates to 1853,Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". and an 1856 official land survey labeled it the "Palo Alto Redwoods";[19] the name "Rancho of Palo Alto" was used as a disambiguation in 1857.[16] Construction of a railroad by the San Francisco & San Jose Railroad Company, connecting San Francisco to San Jose, passed the tree in 1863,Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". making it an obvious landmark for travelers. The section from San Francisco to "Big Tree Station" at the creekScript error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". was inaugurated on October 7 that year.[20] The Southern Pacific Transportation Company purchased the company in March 1868;[21] the tree was featured in Southern Pacific advertising.[22] Edward Vischer's Pictorial of California (1870) contains a drawing of the tree with two trunks, noting it to be "one of the very few instances of that mountain monarch [the redwood] being found in the open level country", and suggests that the tree originally had three trunks, describing it as "[t]wins, once a trio".[23]

Land transfers and the Stanfords

File:University Avenue, facing El Palo Alto, 1894.png
1894 view in University Park, facing northeast toward El Palo Alto in the distance

The land beneath and nearby the tree passed through various owners before becoming part of the city of Palo Alto, which did not yet exist. Some references state that the tree lay at the northwest corner of a Mexican land grant called Rancho Rinconada del Arroyo de San Francisquito,Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Template:Efn which spanned Template:Cvt of oak trees and brush. This corner abutted Rancho San Francisquito to the west and Rancho de las Pulgas to the north.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". In 1835, the Rinconada grant was first given to Don Rafael Soto, whose father had settled in the de Anza expedition of 1775–76.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Soto's widow inherited the grant in 1841.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". She entered a dispute with the US government—which acquired California as a state in 1850, after the Mexican–American War[24]—over whether her claim was valid. Soto's heirs were finally declared the rightful owners in 1872, and gave the contractors who had represented them about Template:Cvt of land as compensation;Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". the heirs kept the other, northern part.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".

In 1876, parts of Rancho San Francisquito was purchased by Leland StanfordScript error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".—who later founded Stanford University with his wife Jane Stanford—for his Palo Alto Stock Farm, a place for breeding and training horses. It would eventually grow to about Template:Cvt.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Following the death of their son in 1884, the Stanfords established a university in his honor on their land.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". In 1887, Soto's heirs sold their land to a good friend of Leland Stanford, Timothy Hopkins, who used it to develop the nearby town of University Park (see 1894 view).[25] In particular, Hopkins acquired land near El Palo Alto, adjacent to Southern Pacific–owned land, that eventually became the city-owned El Palo Alto Park.[26] Stanford University opened on October 1, 1891, with 440 students in attendance, and prompted the rapid growth of University Park.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". In 1894 it incorporated as the city of Palo Alto,Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". a new name for which Stanford had a "great fondness".[25] The first university seal, adopted in 1908, featured El Palo Alto prominently (although its artist Arthur Bridgman Clark drew a more "vigorous"[27] tree, how El Palo Alto might have looked centuries earlier[28]), adorned with Template:Sc to its left and Template:Sc to its right as a motto.[27]Template:Efn Yet, even as the tree became so enmeshed with the university's branding, its position east of the railroad right of way confirms that there never was a time when El Palo Alto was on land owned by Leland Stanford.[29]

One trunk falls

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El Palo Alto had two trunks until some time between 1875[30] and 1882,[31] when the north, more-curved trunk fell.[28]Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". The stump's rings were counted and gave an age of 967 years.[31]

The exact date and cause of the trunk's falling had been thought to be unknown.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". A 1900 article in Palo Alto Live Oak dates the falling to the winter of 1879, blaming a freshet.[18] A December 1882 article in The Sacramento Bee states: "Some years ago it had a companion tree, but the latter was undermined by a subterranean stream and fell to the ground."[31] Local historian Guy Miller studied the matter for over two decades and estimated a date of 1885. Miller suggested that railroad records likely to contain definitive information were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fire.[30]

File:San Mateo Times 11-20-1875.pdf
San Mateo Times clipping from November 1875 on a fallen tree after a rainstorm

However, in a Palo Alto Historical Association talk on October 6, 2024, and in a follow up article in the Palo Alto Historical Association newsletter, Jeff Watt, a local Palo Alto electrical engineer, presented evidence that one of the twin trees likely fell in 1875. He presented a clipping from the Nov 20, 1875 issue of the San Mateo Times that referred to a large redwood growing next to the San Francisquito creek falling during the recent severe rainstorm (6 inches of rain). The article adds that "This tree was one of two giant redwoods growing near each other." Jeff also presented photographs showing only a single trunk for the tree after this date. [32][33]

The San Francisquito Creek's eroding banks further threatened El Palo Alto. Fearing its loss, after the first trunk fell, Leland Stanford directed a wooden bulkhead to be built reinforcing the tree's side of the creek.[34] In 1904 Jane Stanford ordered the building of a cement wall,[35] which was further reinforced around 1909 by Southern Pacific.[22][36]Template:Efn

Early Stanford students had a tradition of climbing the tree and placing a flag as high as possible. The day before admissions day of 1909, a Stanford student (or possibly an employee[37]) was marooned and had to be rescued by other students at night time, marking the last known climb.[1]Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".

Declining health

Grainy image of train crossing trestle, belching black smoke onto the tall tree
Train passes El Palo Alto in 1929

Smog and disruption of roots from the railroad placed El Palo Alto under existential threat; the adjacent railroad was doubled to two tracks in 1902 and by the 1920s the tree was passed by some 70 trains per day.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".[38] Nearby wells and water being taken from San Francisquito Creek lowered the water table, depriving the tree of needed water.[39] Stanford botany professor George James Peirce already found in 1901 that the tree's crown was seriously injured, that the railway had caused changes in the nearby soil's drainage, and that a "thicket of suckers" was present around the tree, akin to those seen "around the stump of a felled or fallen redwood of advanced age."[40] In 1915 Peirce planted seven redwoods on university grounds so that one of them could succeed El Palo Alto following its death.[41][42] Six remain[43]—one was crushed as a sapling by a lawnmower.[41][44]

The Native Sons of the Golden West, an organization dedicated to the preservation of California landmarks, took stewardship of the tree in 1920.[45] Southern Pacific leased the tree to the Native Sons in 1922[46] and in 1925 the surrounding land was converted into a park, now El Palo Alto Park.[47][48] The park spans Template:Cvt and has a pedestrian-bike pathway connecting Palo Alto to Menlo Park.[6] University tree surgeons filled decayed cavities with cement and the tree's base was irrigated using six-inch pipes, sunk eight feet into the earth at regular intervals.[47][48] Southern Pacific hooked up guy wires to stabilize the tree.[49]

Fearing the tree's death, the Native Sons placed a plaqueTemplate:Efn set in a granite boulder under the tree in 1926, in a ceremony attended by more than a thousand people and featuring speeches from the mayor, a Stanford professor, a Southern Pacific representative, and several Native Sons.[50]Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Despite continuous preservation efforts, by the late 1920s newspapers declared the tree moribund.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".[51][52] The top of the tree continued to die and measurements in 1950 found a height of Template:Cvt, compared to Template:Cvt in 1930.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".

Recovery

Facing upward from right next to the tree trunk, showing a small gray pipe going all the way up to the leaves
Irrigation system for El Palo Alto

A watering system—dubbed the "Fool the Redwood Plan" by a caretaker[1]—was installed in 1955 to simulate the moisture that redwoods get in their typical habitat, and to wash soot off the foliage; dead branches were removed during installation.[53] A Jeep-mounted pump was used twice a month to pump water for two hours up the line, which reached Template:Cvt above the tree. It soon became clogged and bent out of shape by high winds, but was fixed in 1958 in a collaboration with the city fire department.[54][55] In 1961 six local arborists together deemed the tree to be in fair condition, but suffering from smog, insufficient water, termites, and a deteriorating root system.[44][56] Smaller, "nurse" trees were planted to protect El Palo Alto's root system from compacted soil.[57] Dead wood and termite infestations were progressively removed, mulch was added at the tree's base,[58] and the tree's top was cut off as it died.[39]

El Palo Alto Park was officially named and made a city park in June 1971.[26] With their disbandment in 1974, the Native Sons' lease of the land immediately around the tree from Southern Pacific expired. The city of Palo Alto, who had long cared for the tree, had incorrectly assumed they were part of the lease.[59] The city sent Southern Pacific a new lease in 1978.[60]

The switching of nearby cities to the Hetch Hetchy water system incidentally let the water table return. Together with watering and fertilization efforts the tree was finally adorned with new growth.[39] A 1999 appraisal concluded that "notwithstanding a catastrophic event ... it is expected that the El Palo Alto redwood will persevere and grow for centuries to come."Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".

Legacy

With Caltrain and new electric overhead lines, facing north, 2022

Once a lone tall tree visible for miles,Template:Efn the tree's decline and the growth of nearby planted trees, such as eucalyptus, have made El Palo Alto much less visible from afar.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". El Palo Alto stands at about Template:Cvt in height,[6] with a Template:Cvt diameter and crown spread of Template:Cvt,Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". and enjoys much greater health than it did a century ago.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Preservation efforts continue, including with ground-penetrating radar, "air-spade excavation",[61] drone monitoring of the tree's crown, and a prism attached to its top to track movement.[1] Caltrain plans to make the railroad electric by 2024, which would eliminate the impact of smoke, and will replace the 1902 trestle.[1][9]

The tree remains prominent on the City of Palo Alto seal, in the Stanford University seal, and as a mascot in the university's marching band.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". The State of California designated the nearby "Portolá Journey's End" as the second California Historical Landmark in 1932;[62] in 1974 the tree itself was registered with the state as a Point of Historical Interest.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". In 1987 the National Arborist Association and the International Society of Arboriculture recognized the tree for its historical importance.[63] In 2004, seedlings from El Palo Alto were planted in the American Forests Historic Tree Nursery in Jacksonville, Florida.[64]

See also

References

Notes

Template:Notelist

Sources

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Citations

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  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  2. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  3. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  4. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  5. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  6. ↑ a b c Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  7. ↑ Script error: No such module "Footnotes". The age was determined accurately in 1955 with an increment borer.
  8. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  9. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  10. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  11. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  12. ↑ a b c d Script error: No such module "citation/CS1". Font's map reproduced therein is also reproduced at [1] Script error: No such module "webarchive".
  13. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  14. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  15. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  16. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  17. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  18. ↑ a b c Script error: No such module "citation/CS1". "In 1849 it quickened the pulse and brought a sparkle to the eyes to stand at Porto Suelo and look from ocean to bay; or on Rincon hill on a clear day, when the Palos Colorados, the red trees of the valley, could be seen thirty-three miles off on the road to San Jose ... Several times the lumber men were about to cut down the Palos Colorados, the lone redwood trees from which the famous Palo Alto ranch has derived its name, but one thing and another hindered. The trees, however, would surely have been cut to save hauling had not the argonaut fleet arrived from New England early in the 1850 with lumber brought around the Horn ... In the winter of 1879 the sister tree, as if nature was conscious that its day of usefulness as a landmark had passed, was prostrated by a freshet."
  19. ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".
  20. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  21. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  22. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  23. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1". Drawing itself is on page 185 Script error: No such module "webarchive". (archived), titled "Evening passenger train on the San Francisco–San Jose railroad, crossing south San Francisquito Creek", dated 1864 to 1867.
  24. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  25. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  26. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  27. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  28. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  29. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  30. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1". Letter is on page 345 of the compilation.
  31. ↑ a b c Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  32. ↑ Tall Tree Mysteries, a talk given by Jeff Watt at the Palo Alto Historical Association, October 6, 2024, https://vimeo.com/1032961802
  33. ↑ http://www.pahistory.org/talltree/TT-2025-12.pdf Template:Bare URL PDF
  34. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  35. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  36. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  37. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  38. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  39. ↑ a b c Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  40. ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1". Reprinted Script error: No such module "webarchive". (April 4, 1901) in Contributions to Biology from the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 23: 87. Retrieved September 21, 2022.
  41. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  42. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  43. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  44. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  45. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  46. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  47. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  48. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  49. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  50. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  51. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1". "The death of the tree within a few years is declared inevitable. A few feet to one side of the old patriarch modern trains roar past every few minutes, and smoke and fumes from the locomotives are killing the foliage."
  52. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  53. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  54. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  55. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  56. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  57. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  58. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  59. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  60. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  61. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  62. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  63. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".

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External links

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