Читать книгу The Trees of San Francisco онлайн

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TREES can have a hard time in San Francisco. Before the arrival of the Spanish to the Bay Area in the late 18th century, San Francisco was largely treeless. Only a few live oaks and willows huddled in wind-sheltered valleys interrupted the expanse between the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. In fact, according to historian Hubert Bancroft, the Spanish explorers described the area as “the very worst place [for settlement] in all California … since the peninsula afforded neither lands, timber, wood, nor water, nothing but sand and brambles and raging winds.” To understand what the city looked like in its natural state 200 years ago, just gaze across the Golden Gate to the Marin Headlands, where you’ll see grassy, windswept hills—and no trees.

San Francisco’s urban forest is a relatively recent phenomenon. Early tree-planting efforts focused almost exclusively on public parks. Beginning in 1870, the creation of Golden Gate Park out of acres of sand dunes was the most ambitious of these efforts. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York’s Central Park, submitted an early plan for a great city park in 1865. His design was rejected, and Olmsted later warned: “There is not a full grown tree of beautiful proportions near San Francisco, nor have I seen any young trees that promised fairly, except, perhaps, certain compact clumpy forms of evergreens, wholly wanting in grace and cheerfulness. It would not be wise nor safe to undertake to form a park upon any plea which assumed as a certainty that trees which would delight the eye can be made to grow near San Francisco.” In spite of Olmsted’s warnings, the city persevered. The design job went to 24-year-old William Hammond Hall (later the park’s first superintendent), and Golden Gate Park became the celebrated heart of San Francisco’s urban forest.