Uncle John's Tree
United StatesSan FranciscoGolden Gate Park
Approximate location.
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.
McLaren Lodge, 501 Stanyan Street, Golden Gate ParkThe 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.
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.
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.
Sources
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