El Palo Alto

Before conquest by Spanish missionaries in the 18th century, the land around El Palo Alto was home to the Ohlone. According to traditional history, El Palo Alto was the campsite of Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá's men between November 6 and 11, 1769. 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. They traveled southwest and arrived at San Francisquito Creek on November 6, 1769, where they camped until November 11.

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. In 1776, 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—15 mi to the southeast. 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. A 1777 map of the bay by Font indicated a large tree on San Francisquito Creek.

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. 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. Two candidates for the landmark tree, elsewhere along the creek, fell in 1852 and 1911.

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". The highway passed close to El Palo Alto and likely brought it to prominence. The tree was nearly cut down in 1850, but was saved by a timely shipment of lumber.

El Palo Alto was first known as the Palos Colorados, roughly meaning 'red trees'. The earliest known reference to the name "Palo Alto" dates to 1853, and an 1856 official land survey labeled it the "Palo Alto Redwoods"; the name "Rancho of Palo Alto" was used as a disambiguation in 1857. Construction of a railroad by the San Francisco & San Jose Railroad Company, connecting San Francisco to San Jose, passed the tree in 1863, making it an obvious landmark for travelers. The section from San Francisco to "Big Tree Station" at the creek was inaugurated on October 7 that year. The Southern Pacific Transportation Company purchased the company in March 1868; the tree was featured in Southern Pacific advertising. 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".

Land transfers and the Stanfords

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, which spanned 2229 acres of oak trees and brush. This corner abutted Rancho San Francisquito to the west and Rancho de las Pulgas to the north. In 1835, the Rinconada grant was first given to Don Rafael Soto, whose father had settled in the de Anza expedition of 1775–76. Soto's widow inherited the grant in 1841. She entered a dispute with the US government—which acquired California as a state in 1850, after the Mexican–American War—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 1400 acre of land as compensation; the heirs kept the other, northern part.

In 1876, parts of Rancho San Francisquito was purchased by Leland Stanford—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 8000 acre. Following the death of their son in 1884, the Stanfords established a university in his honor on their land. 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). 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. Stanford University opened on October 1, 1891, with 440 students in attendance, and prompted the rapid growth of University Park. In 1894 it incorporated as the city of Palo Alto, a new name for which Stanford had a "great fondness". The first university seal, adopted in 1908, featured El Palo Alto prominently (although its artist Arthur Bridgman Clark drew a more "vigorous" tree, how El Palo Alto might have looked centuries earlier), adorned with to its left and to its right as a motto. 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.

One trunk falls

El Palo Alto had two trunks until some time between 1875 and 1882, when the north, more-curved trunk fell. The stump's rings were counted and gave an age of 967 years.

The exact date and cause of the trunk's falling had been thought to be unknown. A 1900 article in Palo Alto Live Oak dates the falling to the winter of 1879, blaming a freshet. 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." 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.

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.

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. In 1904 Jane Stanford ordered the building of a cement wall, which was further reinforced around 1909 by Southern Pacific.

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) was marooned and had to be rescued by other students at night time, marking the last known climb.

Declining health

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. Nearby wells and water being taken from San Francisquito Creek lowered the water table, depriving the tree of needed water. 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." In 1915 Peirce planted seven redwoods on university grounds so that one of them could succeed El Palo Alto following its death. Six remain—one was crushed as a sapling by a lawnmower.

The Native Sons of the Golden West, an organization dedicated to the preservation of California landmarks, took stewardship of the tree in 1920. Southern Pacific leased the tree to the Native Sons in 1922 and in 1925 the surrounding land was converted into a park, now El Palo Alto Park. The park spans 0.5 acre and has a pedestrian-bike pathway connecting Palo Alto to Menlo Park. 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. Southern Pacific hooked up guy wires to stabilize the tree.

Fearing the tree's death, the Native Sons placed a plaque{{efn|The sign reads in full:

Under this giant redwood, the Palo Alto, November 6 to 11, 1769, camped Portola and his band on the expedition that discovered San Francisco Bay. This was the assembling point for their reconnoitering parties. Here in 1774 Padre Palou erected a cross to mark the site of a proposed mission (which later was built at Santa Clara). The celebrated Pedro Font topographical map of 1776 contained the drawing of the original double trunked tree making the Palo Alto the first official living California landmark.

Placed by the Historic Landmark Committee

Native Sons of the Golden West

Nov 7 1926 }} 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. Despite continuous preservation efforts, by the late 1920s newspapers declared the tree moribund. The top of the tree continued to die and measurements in 1950 found a height of 135 ft, compared to 162 ft in 1930.

Recovery

A watering system—dubbed the "Fool the Redwood Plan" by a caretaker—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. A Jeep-mounted pump was used twice a month to pump water for two hours up the line, which reached 10 ft 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. 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. Smaller, "nurse" trees were planted to protect El Palo Alto's root system from compacted soil. Dead wood and termite infestations were progressively removed, mulch was added at the tree's base, and the tree's top was cut off as it died.

El Palo Alto Park was officially named and made a city park in June 1971. 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. The city sent Southern Pacific a new lease in 1978.

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. 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."