History 53S Thursday, February 8, 2007, 3:15 PM

Meet at Elliot Program Center, near Lake Lagunita, in Governor’s Corner

Led by John Rawlings and Herb Fong


Eucalyptus Dreams, bike tour


Reasons to study landscape history include the recognition, appreciation, and documentation of natural and cultural features. Protection or restoration can follow. Once identified, special features may also benefit from governmental regulations. Santa Clara County, for example, has an historic tree ordinance:


Heritage tree shall include any tree which, because of its history, girth, height, species, or other unique quality, has been recommended for inclusion on the heritage resource inventory by the Historical Heritage Commission.


Arizona Garden restoration and native grass plantings in the Campus Drive median, both done under the auspices of Herb Fong, are two notable projects seen en route. The Red Barn and Stanford Barn (former winery) are examples of restored buildings.


There are over 500 species of eucalypts, almost all endemic to Australia. The genus includes the world's tallest and probably largest flowering plants. Fifty, comprising over 10% of campus tree and shrub species diversity, currently grow on campus, including many older trees that have survived freezes, droughts, Mediterranean climate, and relentless building and remodelling. Ninety-four species were present on Stanford lands in 1980, and over 120 species have been grown from the beginning of the Stock Farm. The ongoing Stanford experiment with eucalyptus trees is an important chapter in the horticultural use of the genus outside of Australia, and Stanford's eucalyptus collection remains a significant botanical resource. Some of the species growing on campus today are vouchered in the Robert F. Hoover Herbarium, Cal Poly State Univ.


Eucalypus Ave. (Searsville Road)

Charles Gordon, owner of Mayfield Grange from 1863-1869, is known to have planted eucalyptus [three different species survive today] along roads of  his property. Mayfield Grange was Leland Stanford's first purchase of land for his Menlo Stock Farm, later Stanford University. (Teiser, 1948, Historic Spots in California, Rev. ed., Stanford Univerity Press, p. 340, 347; Tutorow, 2004, The governor: the life and legacy of Leland Stanford, a California colossus. Vol. 1, Arthur H. Clark Co., p. xxx)


Governor’s Ave., Governor’s Lane, Gum Tree Lane, ca 1876 or earlier

was once a 1.4 mile-long Eucalyptus-lined carriage path running north-south from the Stanford Residence on San Francisquito Creek to the reservoir, then turned sharply to the barns (including the current-day Red Barn) and paddocks of the Palo Alto Stock Farm’s trotting department. It was planted in the 1870s with 700 Tasmanian blue gums. Source: Cottle (2005) Stanford Street Names: A Pocket Guide. Note that Ron Bracewell writes in “Eucalyptus Notes” that the lane was 1.6 miles long and planted with 1,000 blue gums.


Consider while biking along Gum Tree Lane its historical significance, and evaluate its current condition. Who would have placed the undated marker that Bracewell writes about in “Eucalyptus Notes” in the Blake Wilbur Clinic parking lot commemorating Governor’s Lane?  On my first visit to this marker, looking around at the surrounding hodgepodge of buildings and landscaping, I considered whether its intent was ironical, placed by a dissatisfied preservationist. The plaque reads:


This tree lined lane once served as a direct access from the original Stanford home to the Lake Lagunita area. This lane follows a true north/south alignment and provides one of the most significant landscape artifacts on the Stanford Campus. Long since abandoned as a usable route, the Governor's Lane is in the process of being re-established as a pedestrian, vehicular and visual corridor. Over the next few years, dying Eucalyptus trees will be replaced and a pathway constructed to provide a continuous link as it once stood.


Trees to meet on route and other interesting features:


"The few cherished trees that remain on campus today give but a faint idea of the groves that once stood there. The charcoal obtained from the slaughter [from 1840s-1860s] of these great trees were sacked and taken to the mouth of San Franciquito Creek, where it was loaded on barges and shipped to San Francisco." (Teiser, 1948, Historic Spots in California, Rev. ed., Stanford Univerity Press, p. 347)


Arboretum and Governor's Lane, 1952

Stanford Historical Photographs Campus aerial view folder #1


Optional Side Trip: Cantor Center North Side archaeological expedition to trees planted or transplanted from 1880-1891


Arizona Garden, Mausoleum, Angel of Grief


Arboretum: Eucalyptus as nurse trees and magnificent woodland trees


The cessation of both intensive gardening (including the ongoing thinning of many rapidly growing blue gums) and irrigation, following Leland Stanford's (Sr.) death in 1893, resulted in the decline of the great collection of tens-of-thousands of trees and shrubs planted from the late 1870s through 1892. In the Stanford Alumnus of December, 1906, William R. Dudley, Professor of Botany, mentioned "the great variety of trees and shrubs still growing in the Arboretum. Unfortunately, work [both Olmsted's and Thomas Douglas'] ceased in 1890 or 1891, and since then it has been a pathetic struggle for existence among them all, and not always a successful one." I have compiled a preliminary list of trees lost from the two heroic planting phases of that period.

Mausoleum and surrounding Arboretum in 1919. "It has been a pathetic struggle for existence among them all" (Dudley, 1906).

 Stanford Historical Photographs Campus aerial view folder #1


Toyon Grove: blue gum wood lot, early 20th century

Experience with blue gums over more than 30 years led the Board of Trustees to plant [in 1916] a triangular area across Galvez Street from the football stadium as an investment. That the trees were planted 6 feet apart indicates that harvesting was intended within a few years, however the crop was never harvested. Consequently, competition for sunlight and moisture, interspersed by occasional drought and severe freezes, made the weakened grove (now quaintly named Toyon Grove) a prime target for longicorn beetles that arrived in 1988. Whence come the names Toyon Grove, Toyon Hall?


Return to central campus via Galvez and Campus Drive East to Escondido Rd, Eucalyptus plantings from 1960s-1990s

modern plantings of eucalypts as street trees, riding by or near 26 species representing gums, boxes, malles, and ironbarks; many are listed in Bracewell's (2000) Eucalyptus Tour, if you are really getting into eucalypts. Eucalypus Road, on the route, was renamed Mel Nelson Mall in 1990.


Maps
  1. Leland Stanford's first forest (later known as the Arboretum) as depicted by Frederick Law Olmsted's Plan of the Leland Stanford Jr., University, Garden and Forest, Dec. 19 (1888): 506. Typescript of the published article. PDF of map only.
  2. 1880 survey map showing trees and land uses of  what would become the future Arboretum. M-150 Stanford University Archives.


John Rawlings rawlings@stanford.edu