Roosevelt Palm

Theodore Roosevelt planted this palm on 7 May 1903, on a visit to Riverside. The tablet beneath it says 8 May. The local historians who checked the dates say the tablet is wrong, and the tablet has been saying it since 1965. The Native Daughters of the Golden West put that tablet up on 27 March 1965, and its text calls the tree a Queen Victoria palm. It is a Mexican fan palm, Washingtonia robusta, as a local history site that researched the visit records. The city made it City of Riverside Landmark number 64, and it stands on Victoria Avenue, itself listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. The practical problem is that it has company. The palm shares a small piece of land near Myrtle Street with five other palms, and nothing about the trunks themselves tells you which of the six a president planted. The tablet does: the Roosevelt Palm is the one standing over it. We do not have a photograph we can be sure shows the right trunk, so if you visit, a picture that includes the tablet would help the next person. The most recent report, from October 2025, has it still standing along Victoria Avenue. It is on the public street frontage and free to see at any hour, about three kilometres from the Parent Navel Orange Tree.