Uncle John's Tree
roughly 145 yearsMonterey Cypresspin approximate
Which one is it? The large cypress on the open lawn directly in front of the McLaren Lodge entrance, at the Stanyan Street end of the park. In December it is the one carrying the lights.
San Francisco's Christmas tree has roots. The Monterey cypress on the lawn outside McLaren Lodge was first strung with 800 bulbs in 1929, on the birthday of John McLaren, the park superintendent the lodge is named for, and it has been lit almost every December since. McLaren asked on his deathbed that the lighting go on. He died in 1943, and it has. The tree took his name too. Park historians put its planting at around 1880, which makes it roughly 135 to 155 years old and one of the oldest things growing in a park that was bare sand dunes when the city started work on it in the 1870s. Monterey cypress grows wild on a couple of headlands of the California coast and nowhere else on earth, which means a large one in a city park is a planted tree by definition rather than a survivor of anything. No girth or height has been published for it, and no register carries a coordinate for the trunk, so the pin here marks McLaren Lodge, the parks department's own headquarters building at the Stanyan Street corner of the park. Walk to the front entrance and the cypress is the big one on the lawn.
The button above opens directions in your maps app. MUNI bus lines on Fell/Oak or the N-Judah/5-Fulton corridor stop within a few minutes' walk; the tree stands right at the Panhandle entrance to the park.
The pin marks the right spot roughly, not the tree itself. It stands here, but we have not confirmed the precise position on the ground yet. Know exactly where it is?
- Species
- Monterey Cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa)
- Age estimate
- roughly 145 years
- Location
- McLaren Lodge, 501 Stanyan Street, Golden Gate Park (Golden Gate Park (Panhandle / east end))
- Access
- Free, always open. Stands on the public lawn immediately outside McLaren Lodge, the SF Recreation and Parks headquarters building at the east end of Golden Gate Park.
- Getting there
- MUNI bus lines on Fell/Oak or the N-Judah/5-Fulton corridor stop within a few minutes' walk; the tree stands right at the Panhandle entrance to the park.
Trees nearby
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
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