El Palo Alto

Palo Alto is named for how tall this redwood used to be. El Palo Alto is Spanish for the tall stick, the tree is on the city seal, and since 1930 it has lost about sixteen metres off the top. It measured 162 feet then. It stands at roughly 110 today, about thirty three and a half metres, with a dead top. The cause was not a storm or a disease but plumbing: the water table under San Francisquito Creek was drawn down between 1865 and 1955, and the crown died back progressively as the water went. The tree is old enough for all of that to be a late chapter. Estimates put it at a thousand years and a little beyond, which means it was already several centuries into its life when a Spanish expedition is recorded camping at this creek in 1769. It may now be the most closely monitored tree in California. A donated assessment in March 2025 ran ground-penetrating radar under it, excavated the roots with compressed air, flew a drone through the crown and left a prism on the trunk to track whether it moves. The verdict was decay and a dead top, on sound buttress roots. It stands in El Palo Alto Park on the creek bank by Alma Street, walkable from downtown, with Caltrain going past a few metres away. A survivor rather than a giant, which is the more interesting of the two.