Part 2: The Myth of Adolph Sutro in Glen Park
Part of a series entitled, Rancho San Miguel: Facts, Myths & Legends of the Glen Park District
By Evelyn Rose
This series of posts delve into the history of Rancho San Miguel as it pertains specifically to the Glen Park district, including Glen Park, Glen Canyon Park, Sunnyside, Fairmount Heights, and Diamond Heights. Throughout this series, some local myths and legends will be debunked, and new and surprising histories will be revealed. Navigation to previous and next posts can be found at the end of the article. A more detailed Rancho San Miguel timeline will be added in the coming weeks.
The investigation
Which of the following statements about Adolph Sutro and Glen Park do you accept as the truth?
“The park's history commences with Adolph Sutro's purchase in the 1850s of 76 acres of the canyon, which he named ‘Gum Tree Ranch’ after the blue gum eucalyptus trees he had planted.” [Glen Canyon Park, History, Wikipedia, last updated 2024]
“It [Rancho San Miguel] passed through several other owners until it was bought by Adolph Sutro in 1880. This former mayor, who once owned one-twelfth of the city, left a legacy in the form of the eucalyptus trees that cover Mount Sutro and Glen Canyon.” [From San Francisco's Glen Park and Diamond Heights. Acadia Publishing, 2007]
“Many of the park’s [Glen Canyon Park’s] eucalyptus trees were planted more than 100 years ago by Adolph Sutro and have lived past their healthy lifespan.” [San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Administrator, in reference to Glen Canyon Park, 2024]
These statements, in one form or another, have come to represent the popular history of Glen Canyon and the Glen Park district. When I began my Glen Park research years ago, I, too, originally accepted them as fact. That is, until I came across a homestead map from 1890 that threw the veracity of these statements into question.
The map covers a swath of land from Twin Peaks southward through the future Glen Park district to the southern edge of Sunnyside, and from the eastern slope of Mt. Davidson to the eastern slope of Fairmount Hill. With time, I came to realize that this map was proof that Adolph Sutro never owned any land or planted trees in the Glen Park district, as many sources had been claiming. Then in the summer of 2024 when I read the post by a city administrator that included Statement Number 3 above, I realized I could no longer allow the misinformation about Sutro’s involvement to continue. I took steps to reprioritize my research topics and began the journey to retrace land ownership of that portion of the Rancho San Miguel that specifically pertains to the Glen Park district we know today.
Rancho San Miguel
Rancho San Miguel has a very complicated history. Originally issued to José de Jesús Noé in 1845 by Governor Pío Pico and approved by the Alta California Assembly in 1846, the Mexican land grant comprised 4,443 acres, one-sixth of the land mass of today’s City and County of San Francisco. Using modern landmarks, Noé’s rancho generally extended from San Jose Avenue west to Junipero Serra Boulevard, and from Cole Valley south to just beyond the San Mateo County line, near the intersection of San Jose Avenue and John Daly Boulevard. The area includes today’s Mt. Sutro, Twin Peaks, Mt. Davidson, Cole Valley, Eureka Valley, Noe Valley, Glen Park, Glen Canyon, Sunnyside, Fairmount Heights, Diamond Heights, Clarendon Heights, Laguna Honda, West Portal, St. Francis Wood, Miraloma, New Mission Terrace, Forest Hill, Westwood Park, Ingleside Terraces, and Monterey Heights, to name just a few.
In 2001, local historian Mae Silver published a history of Rancho San Miguel – an excellent work that she completed the old-fashioned way, long before many historical records had become digitized. Now with the benefit of mostly digitized records, I, too, have been down the many rabbit holes of Rancho San Miguel land acquisitions and parcel transfers. I marvel that Silver was able to navigate through the archival records and the head-spinning conundrums they reveal without the aid of an electronic search button.
In the first post of this series, I explain how unsupported misinformation can slowly replace evidence-based facts over time. This seems to be the case with Sutro’s perceived association with the Glen Park district: that Adolph Sutro had anything to do with the Glen Park district is a myth.
As soon as Noé began selling off land in Rancho San Miguel in the early 1850s, each transaction included a parcel or section of the total land mass. Rancho San Miguel would never again be whole. Therefore, it is crucial for anyone researching this history to understand which parcel of the rancho is included in a transaction before making a broad assumption that any mention of Rancho San Miguel automatically includes land of the Glen Park district.
So, just how and when did that myth become the perceived truth?
Origins of misinformation about the history of the Glen Park district
Vintage issues of Glen Park News dating back to 1977 – including a 1979 article about Noé’s Rancho San Miguel – say nothing about Adolph Sutro planting trees in the Glen Park district. The article correctly states that Sutro sold a tract of land to the Crocker Estate Company. However, that tract did not include the Glen Park district, and the author makes no attempt to make that connection (more details about this transaction will be made in a future post in this series).
San Francisco at Your Feet columnist Margot Patterson Doss described the beauty of Glen Canyon in two columns, one in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 27, 1963, and again 10 years later in the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle on September 30, 1973 [vintage articles of the Chronicle and Examiner can be accessed online with a library card through the San Francisco Public Library Articles and Databases]. In both articles, she makes no mention of Adolph Sutro planting trees in our district. In a subsequent article about Mt. Davidson in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 7, 1985, Doss credits Sutro for planting trees on that peak but makes no statement about a possible connection with the adjacent Glen Canyon.
An article by architectural historian Christopher P. Verplanck entitled, Glen Park: The Architecture and Social History, published in 2001 and available for many years on the San Francisco Apartment Magazine website, was silent regarding Sutro. The Significant Natural Resource Area Management Plan released in 2006 by San Francisco Recreation and Parks that includes Glen Canyon Park and other San Francisco natural areas also says nothing about Sutro planting trees in Glen Canyon. Nor does Rancho San Miguel historian Mae Silver say anything about Sutro planting trees or establishing a Gum Tree Ranch in the Glen Park district in her 2001 book.
So how did the myth of Adolph Sutro and Glen Park come to be? It seems that statements claiming Sutro had direct involvement with the future Glen Park district began to appear after the year 2000. Thanks to the availability of digitized information, I believe I have found the origin of these claims.
Back through digital time
Conceived in 1996 by the nonprofit Internet Archive, The Wayback Machine has been crawling the Internet and capturing snapshots of web pages ever since. When I searched the repository of the Wayback Machine using the claims about Sutro and Glen Park listed at the top of this post, I came across a now-defunct website called “The Bandit Notes” that described landscapes across the Bay Area. In a post about Glen Canyon dated April 2001, The Bandit Notes states:
"The lowest, southern part of the park [the area around the Glen Canyon Recreation Center] is dominated by eucalyptus and is less interesting. These trees were originally planted for wind abatement by Adolph Sutro in the 1850s when he owned the land, subsequently naming it 'Gum Tree Ranch' ... For more on the 'colorful' history of Glen Canyon, read an informative essay by [---]* at www.sfneighborhoodparks.org/parkhistories/index.html."
After connecting to this link in the Wayback Machine, it seems that misinformation about Sutro’s involvement with the Glen Park district may have originated here. The statement was posted by a member* of the Neighborhood Parks Council, a nonprofit organization that merged with the San Francisco Parks Trust in 2011 to establish the San Francisco Parks Alliance. The member* (who appears to have also written the histories of several other San Francisco parks) posted their ‘colorful’ history of Glen Canyon Park without providing any supporting evidence. Here is what they wrote (the statements highlighted in red represent what we now know to be incorrect or misinterpreted information):
“Its colorful past began in the 1850s when, as part of the Rancho San Miguel, Adolph Sutro bought 76 acres, and named it 'Gum Tree Ranch' after the blue gum eucalyptus trees he had planted. The Crocker Real Estate Company bought it [the 76 acres] in 1889 to develop a neighborhood that would attract homebuyers. Crocker installed a mini-amusement park with an aviary, a mini-zoo--bears, elephants and monkeys, a bowling alley, and for extra thrills, hot-air balloon rides, and an intrepid tight-rope walker who performed on a wire stretched across the canyon. In 1891, when Joost Electric Streetcar Company built the Glen Canyon line linking the neighborhood to downtown San Francisco, homebuyers flocked. Fifteen years later the park became a refugee camp for those made homeless by the earthquake and fires of 1906.”
Many of the above claims require correction. In this post, I will only focus on statements claiming that Sutro owned land and planted trees in the Glen Park district. The other claims will be covered in a future post.
Sutro in San Francisco
To state that the ‘colorful’ history of Glen Canyon did not begin until the American period in the 1850s completely ignores other significant periods of San Francisco’s past. It erases thousands of years of pre-history when the Yelamu people of the Ramaytush Ohlone were stewards of all the land of the San Francisco Peninsula north of San Bruno Mountain. It also negates the Hispanic history of the region during the Spanish and Mexican periods.
Adolph Sutro was, indeed, in San Francisco in the 1850s. As a pioneer merchant of cigars, the revenue he earned may have made his life comfortable. However, it is not a profession that would have necessarily led to independent wealth. It is not clear which 76 acres of land the writer claims Sutro purchased, but after an extensive search I could not find evidence of any land transaction by Sutro during the 1850s (though it is possible that a transaction may not have been made public, or that the records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire).
Sutro and the Gum Tree Ranch
The 1860 US Federal Census for San Francisco lists the occupation of 40-year-old Henry Wilson, a native of England, as “milk + farmer.” On an 1854 map of “Land Surveyed for Henry Wilson,” his land is in the shape of a polygon, comprised of 109 acres with no recognizable landmarks. Later maps, such as the Fairmount Extension Homestead in 1872 by Hyrum Wilder (namesake of Glen Park’s Wilder Street) and an 1895 map of Subdivision 1, Castro Street Addition by C. W. McAfee [homestead maps can be viewed at the San Francisco History Room of the San Francisco Public Library], help position the polygon’s boundaries as extending from the area north and west of today's Diamond and Chenery Streets, south across Bosworth Street to the line of either Joost Avenue or Monterey Boulevard, then westerly up the slope of Martha Hill and northerly back across Bosworth along Glen Canyon (then known variously as Rock House Canyon or Rock Gulch). The Federal Non-Population Census of 1860 further states that on Wilson’s 160 acres he also owned 3 horses, 40 "milch" cows, 56 other cattle, 4 swine, and was harvesting 200 bushels of oats, 200 bushels of Irish potatoes, and 30 tons of hay. In total, Wilson claimed the cash value of his farm to be $8,000 (about $275,000 today).
Then in 1861, the Langley and Wackenreuder Map of the City and County of San Francisco shows a much smaller footprint for Wilson's property, centered immediately west and north of what would become today's intersection of Chenery and Diamond Streets. This acreage appears to be the location of the first trees ever planted in the Glen Park district.
Live eucalyptus trees (such as blue gum and others) were first shipped to San Francisco from Australia in 1853 as an ornamental. They were not sold in volume until 1857. As seen in the earliest known images of today’s Glen Canyon taken in 1891 and like much of San Francisco, the landscape is treeless (though wild iris abounds). This is likely the same wide-open landscape that greeted the Anza Expedition as it arrived in 1776 to establish the Presidio and Mission Dolores. They were also the first Europeans to exit along what would famously become known as the El Camino Real, on a route following the general line of Chenery Street through the future Glen Park district.
After gum trees were available for purchase in bulk, Henry Wilson planted a grove of eucalyptus on his land sometime in the late 1850s to early 1860s, likely for wind abatement. That Wilson had, indeed, planted trees on his land was confirmed to me in a conversation I had with one of his descendants several years ago at the Glen Park Festival.
Then about 30 years later, the first reference to the Gum Tree Grove appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on July 12, 1890, when an escaped prisoner from the House of Correction south of Sunnyside was reported to have been recaptured under the grove’s canopy. And when the San Francisco-San Mateo Electric Railway began running in 1891 along Chenery Street before turning south on Diamond Street, the now mature grove was being enjoyed by passengers as they tottered by. It is this grove of eucalyptus, planted by Wilson, that would give Glen Park the moniker of the Gum Tree District, a nickname that became further entrenched by the historic activism of the Glen Park Gum Tree Girls in the mid-20th century.
Similarly, there is no mention of “Gum Tree Ranch” in San Francisco until a report in the San Francisco Call on August 8, 1891, identified realtor Archibald S. Baldwin of the agency that would later be known as Baldwin & Howell (at that time known as McAfee, Baldwin & Hammond) as the owner of the ranch. Moreover, according to reminiscences of a long-time resident of Glen Park published in the San Francisco Chronicle on November 21, 1947, the Gum Tree Ranch was not in Glen Canyon but located in the area of Surrey Street, Sussex Street, and Poppy Lane in Glen Park along Diamond Street, a location that is adjacent to Wilson’s Gum Tree Grove.
Therefore, the evidence actually does support the statement that eucalyptus trees were planted in the Glen Park district in the late 1850s or early 1860s. However, they were planted by Henry Wilson and not Adolph Sutro. There is no evidence to support the claim that Sutro bought land, planted gum trees, or established the Gum Tree Ranch in Glen Canyon or Glen Park in the 1850s.
Sutro’s Purchase of Rancho San Miguel Land in 1880
After arriving at the Comstock Silver Lode in Nevada in 1859, Sutro conceived a tunnel that would improve ventilation for miners, a project that took 14 years to complete. When he sold the tunnel in 1879, he returned to San Francisco a millionaire and began investing in real estate, including lands of Rancho San Miguel.
In 1880, Sutro purchased 1,200 acres of Rancho San Miguel in its northwest quadrant for $240,000 ($7.7 million today; an announcement in the Sacramento Daily Union, August 23, 1880, states 1,500 acres). Authors of the Corbett Heights, San Francisco (Western Part of Eureka Valley) Historic Context Statement note that the land was west of Corbett Heights (which also implies it was west of Twin Peaks and Glen Canyon).
The key term here is “northwest quadrant,” meaning the land in this section of Noé’s original Rancho San Miguel was closer to the Pacific Ocean than the interior. [For more about the history of Sutro’s acquisition of a portion of Rancho San Miguel, also see Richard Brandi’s “Farms, Fire and Forest: Adolph Sutro and Development ‘West of Twin Peaks,’” originally published in the Argonaut and available at FoundSF.org, and Jacquie Proctor’s "Adolph Sutro's Urban Forests: Influences and Lasting Benefits," also in the Argonaut.]
However, there was another San Francisco mogul who had his eye on owning a large parcel of Rancho San Miguel lands. In 1877, Levi Parsons (an associate of F. L. A. Pioche and L. L. Robinson, who will both be discussed in a future post in this series) transferred 609 acres of Rancho San Miguel to an N. T. Smith for $200,000 (about $4.9 million today). The boundaries of this acreage were not described. Then 2 days later, Smith transferred 709 acres of the San Miguel Ranch back to Mary J. Parsons (presumably Levi’s wife) “at 6% for 10 years” for $125,000 (about $3.6 million today). No subsequent transactions associated with Mary J. Parsons have been found, and it is unclear how the acreage of these 2 transactions may have overlapped. This exchange is representative of the many examples of the labyrinth of details encountered while tracing land ownership of the Rancho San Miguel – cookie crumbs of evidence can suddenly emerge, reverse course, and just as suddenly disappear.
According to various newspaper accounts and San Francisco city directories, Smith was the treasurer for many of the railroad companies (including the Market Street Railway and the Central Pacific that later became the Southern Pacific) organized by the Big Four of Transcontinental Railroad fame: Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Collis Huntington. Smith’s next transaction reveals a surprising, important, and, unbelievably, forgotten piece of Glen Park district history.
According to the San Francisco Examiner, on May 25, 1882, N. T. Smith transferred 699 acres of Rancho San Miguel to none other than United States Senator and former Governor of California Leland Stanford (how this land may have been related with the Smith-to-Mary Parsons back-and-forth exchange in 1877 is unclear; it may be that Mary Parsons subsequently transferred the land back to Smith in an undisclosed transaction).
Based on the homestead map (above) that Stanford would approve 8 years later in 1890, this land extended from Twin Peaks and Glen Canyon south to just beyond today’s City College, and abutted Sutro’s land on Mt. Davidson to the west. That property line, confirmed by Proctor in her article noted above, is still clearly visible today as the sharp-edged tree line on the eastern slope of Mt. Davidson.
Therefore, Sutro’s purchase of the “northwest quadrant” of Rancho San Miguel was adjacent to, but not inclusive of, the Glen Park district. Moreover, Sutro and Stanford simultaneously owned these adjacent but separate landscapes. Therefore, Sutro could not have owned land in the Glen Park district at the same time as Stanford.
Sutro Plants Trees
Also described by Proctor, Sutro’s penchant for nature was influenced not only by his childhood experience in the natural landscapes of his native Germany, but also the work of one of his contemporaries, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Collaborating locally with poet Joaquin Miller, Sutro organized the first San Francisco Arbor Day, celebrated on Yerba Buena Island (then known as Goat Island) and the city on November 26, 1886. Sutro donated 1 tree to each of the 40,000 children in the city to plant and tend themselves. It is on this date (and not before) that Sutro’s bulk-volume tree planting began in earnest. When he died in 1898, Sutro’s forest extended 2.5 miles from Mt. Sutro south to Ocean Avenue and never extended east of the Mt. Davidson tree line into Glen Canyon or the Glen Park district.
Insights
Based on this evidence, the neighborhood lore of Adolph Sutro having owned land in the Glen Park district, or that he planted trees and established the Gum Tree Ranch have been debunked. Unfortunately, the Sutro myth has been perpetuated and repeated so often that many, including those in several city government offices, have accepted these misstatements as fact.
It may never be known how Statements 1 through 3 above came to be presented and interpreted as fact. Perhaps they were based on hearsay and a neighborhood’s collective memory which, much like the diminishing accuracy of a statement during a game of Telephone, can become altered and less reliable over time. Then, in the quest to publish, assumptions were made, creative license was taken, and mistakes occurred.
And with the understanding that we all make mistakes, perhaps one misstatement in Silver’s history of “Rancho San Miguel, A San Francisco Neighborhood History” may have played a role to initiate a sequence of events that led to misinformation.
In 1910, realtor Archibald S. Baldwin was commissioned to perform an appraisal of the Rancho San Miguel lands owned by the Sutro Estate. Silver states that Glen Park and Diamond Heights, along with the other West of Twin Peaks neighborhoods, were included in that assessment. However, a search of Baldwin's survey finds no mention of Glen Park, Glen Canyon, Rock Gulch, or other related names (and Diamond Heights would not be named for another 40 years). Moreover, the map of Sutro’s purchase that includes Mt. Sutro and Mt. Davidson refutes the inclusion of any part of the Glen Park district. This seemingly minor misstatement by Silver may have been the trigger that innocently led to the development of a more ‘colorful’ history of the Glen Park district by others.
These misstatements and misunderstandings of available information highlight the critical need to verify the accuracy of claims by cross-checking the veracity of statements that support those claims. And in these days of misinformation and disinformation, we all need to up our game to secure and perpetuate the true truth every single day.
In my next post, we’ll explore the factual history of the so-called “Crocker mini-amusement park” in Glen Canyon.
*While names are mentioned in the 2001 web pages on the Wayback Machine, those names will not be revealed in these posts. This exercise is not about shaming but about correcting misinformation.
<<Rancho San Miguel: Previous Post>> <<Rancho San Miguel: Next Post Not Yet Posted>>
Comments