History of Mt Davidson
Site: Mt Davidson.
The explanation of why Mt D looks the way it does.
Through most of the 19th century, Mt Davidson was known as “Blue Mountain” because it was covered with native coastal scrub that contained so many blue-blooming forbs that in the spring it appeared blue from a distance.
Then in the late 1880s and early 1890s, Adolph Sutro — a Comstock Lode millionaire who owned most of the mountain — planted his holdings with blue gum eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and Monterey cypress. He also built a nearby sawmill, as his forestation plans were largely driven by his goal to produce commercial timber, the large tax breaks he got, and his desire to transform the “bare” San Francisco hills into something that looked more like his native Germany. Unfortunately for him — and us — he died before these goals could be completed. The planned thinning of the trees never happened — setting us up for the management problems we grapple with daily at this site.
Interestingly, the rest of Mt Davidson was owned by Leland Stanford who elected not to plant trees. The sharp division on Mt D between trees and grasslands marks the property line between the two men’s holdings.
Subsequently, San Francisco’s avaricious development moved up the flanks of Mt Davidson. In the 1930s, Madie Brown led the charge to obtain the hill as an official city park, while in the 1990s, Jacquie Proctor and the Friends of Mt Davidson Conservancy led the battle to prevent the area around the cross from succumbing to developers.
Read much more about these events and lots of other fascinating topics at Jacquie’s MtDavidson.org web site!
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