| Old Survivor | |
|---|---|
 | |
  Old Survivor | |
| Species | Coast redwood ( Sequoia sempervirens ) |
| Coordinates | 37°47′34″N122°10′29″W / 37.7928°N 122.1748°W |
| Height | 250 ft (76 m) |
| Diameter | 26 ft (7.9 m) |
| Date seeded | 1549-1554 |
Old Survivor, also known as the Grandfather Tree, is the last remaining old-growth coastal redwood of the East Bay Redwoods that once populated the Oakland Hills in California.
Old Survivor has a unique shaggy appearance with several large branches drooping outward from its sparse upper crown. The tree is much taller than the surrounding trees, all of which are second growth. Despite its name, the tree, which dates to 1549–1554, is actually young for an old-growth coastal redwood, many of which live between 1200 and 1800 years old or more. [1] Between 7-12 years before Old Survivor was seeded, Spanish/Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo had led the first expedition to explore the coast of what is now California. [2]
The tree can be observed at a distance from the York Trail of Leona Heights Park, or from the parking lot of Carl B. Munck Elementary School where there is a plaque detailing the tree's statistics and history.
From 1845 to 1860, logging of the coastal redwoods in the area for their valuable timber wiped out much of the dense coastal redwood forest that once populated the Oakland Hills of East Bay. A second wave of logging following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake further contributed to the forest's destruction, leaving only a few scattered pockets of old-growth redwoods left in the entirety of East Bay. Old Survivor's location on an exceptionally steep and rocky slope beside Horseshoe Creek made it unprofitable to log, and thus the tree was spared the fate of its neighbors. [3]
In 1916, the land where the tree stands was purchased by the city of Oakland in order to preserve the remaining redwoods in the area. [4]
The tree was rediscovered in 1969 by Oakland Parks naturalist Paul Covel in what was then McCrea Memorial Park (today called Leona Heights Park). A core ring count at the time made by Glen Strouse at Humboldt State University estimated the tree's age to be between 415 and 420 years old relative to 1969. [4] [5] [6]
Old Survivor was designated a City of Oakland Historic Landmark on June 24, 1980. [7]
In 2018, the documentary film Old Survivor celebrated the tree and reflected back on the history of Oakland's coastal redwood forests. [8] [9]
San Mateo County, officially the County of San Mateo, is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 764,442. Redwood City is the county seat, the third-most populated city in the county after Daly City and San Mateo.
Northern California is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's 58 counties. Northern California in its largest definition is determined by dividing the state into two regions, the other being Southern California. The main northern population centers include the San Francisco Bay Area, the Greater Sacramento area, the Redding, California, area south of the Cascade Range, and the Metropolitan Fresno area. Northern California also contains redwood forests, along with most of the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite Valley and part of Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta, and most of the Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions. Northern California is also home to Silicon Valley, the global headquarters for some of the most powerful tech and Internet-related companies in the world, including Meta, Apple, Google, and Nvidia.
Muir Woods National Monument is a United States National Monument managed by the National Park Service and named after naturalist John Muir. It is located on Mount Tamalpais near the Pacific coast in southwestern Marin County, California. The Monument is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and is 12 miles (19 km) north of San Francisco. It protects 554 acres (224 ha), of which 240 acres (97 ha) are old growth coast redwood forests, one of a few such stands remaining in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP) are a complex of one United States national park and three California state parks located along the coast of northern California. The combined RNSP contain Redwood National Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. The parks' 139,000 acres preserve 45 percent of all remaining old-growth coast redwood forests.
The Santa Lucia Range or Santa Lucia Mountains is a rugged mountain range in coastal central California, running from Carmel southeast for 140 miles (230 km) to the Cuyama River in San Luis Obispo County. The range is never more than 11 miles (18 km) from the coast. The range forms the steepest coastal slope in the contiguous United States. Cone Peak at 5,158 feet (1,572 m) tall and three miles (5 km) from the coast, is the highest peak in proximity to the ocean in the lower 48 United States. The range was a barrier to exploring the coast of central California for early Spanish explorers.
Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park is a state park of California, United States, preserving mainly forest and riparian areas in the watershed of the San Lorenzo River, including a grove of old-growth coast redwood. It is located in Santa Cruz County, primarily in the area between the cities of Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley, near the community of Felton and the University of California at Santa Cruz. The park includes a non-contiguous extension in the Fall Creek area north of Felton. The 4,623-acre (1,871 ha) park was established in 1953.
The Northern California coastal forests are a temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of coastal Northern California and southwestern Oregon.
Montclair is a hillside neighborhood in Oakland, California, United States. Montclair is located along the western slope of the Oakland Hills from a valley formed by the Hayward Fault to the upper ridge of the hills.
Cabrillo National Monument is a national monument at the southern tip of the Point Loma Peninsula in San Diego, California, United States. It commemorates the landing of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo at San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542. This event marked the first time a European expedition had set foot on what later became the West Coast of the United States. The site was designated as California Historical Landmark #56 in 1932. The area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966.
Redwood Heights is a primarily middle-class and highly diverse residential neighborhood in the hills of East Oakland, California. It is centered on Redwood Road, which was once a logging road. Redwood Road is the designation for 35th Avenue, starting about one mile north of MacArthur Boulevard between Victor Avenue and the Warren Freeway. It lies at an elevation of 476 feet.
Kings Mountain is an unincorporated community in San Mateo County, California, located along State Route 35 between Skeggs Point and Pise Mountain. This is about 5 miles (8 km) north of Woodside Road (SR84). In the U.S. Geological Survey, National Geographic Names Database, the area is identified only as a geographic feature of type "summit" and not as a populated place. The community is inside area code 650 and uses the Woodside ZIP Code 94062.
Dr. Aurelia Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park is a part of the East Bay Regional Parks District (EBRPD) in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is located in the hills east of Oakland, California. The park contains the largest remaining natural stand of coast redwood found in the East Bay. The park is part of a historical belt of coast redwood extending south to Leona Canyon Regional Open Space Preserve and east to Moraga.
San Leandro Creek is a 21.7-mile-long (34.9 km) year-round natural stream in the hills above Oakland in Alameda County and Contra Costa County of the East Bay in northern California.
The Redwood Grove of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which is located in Santa Cruz County in Northern California, is a grove of Coast Redwoods with trees extending into the 1400- to 1800-year-old range. This grove allows for the use of self-guided tours of the flat, 0.8-mile (1.3 km) loop trail which is easily accessible. Dozens of large, Redwood trees are located within a few feet of the walking trail.
Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve is a 241 acres (0.98 km2) regional park and nature reserve in the Oakland Hills, in the eastern East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area of California. It is within Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. It is a park within the East Bay Regional Parks District system. The Preserve is named after the California Huckleberry which grows abundantly within its habitat.
Roberts Regional Recreation Area (RRRA) is an area adjacent to Redwood Regional Park located in Alameda County next to Oakland, CA and is part of the East Bay Regional Parks (EBRPD). It is across Skyline Drive from the City of Oakland's Joaquin Miller Park. Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp. adopted Roberts Park in 1979, under the newly-developed Adopt-a-Park program, which promised continued funding. This was the first park in EBRPD to be so adopted.
Sequoia sempervirens is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Common names include coast redwood, coastal redwood and California redwood. It is an evergreen, long-lived, monoecious tree living 1,200–2,200 years or more. This species includes the tallest living trees on Earth, reaching up to 115.9 m (380.1 ft) in height and up to 8.9 m (29 ft) in diameter at breast height. These trees are also among the longest-living trees on Earth. Before commercial logging and clearing began by the 1850s, this massive tree occurred naturally in an estimated 810,000 ha along much of coastal California and the southwestern corner of coastal Oregon within the United States. Being the tallest tree species, with a small range and an extremely long lifespan, many redwoods are preserved in various state and national parks; many of the largest specimens have their own official names.
Arroyo Viejo is a westward flowing 5.1 miles (8.2 km) creek that begins in the Oakland Hills in Alameda County, California, and joins Lion Creek just before entering San Leandro Bay, a part of eastern San Francisco Bay.
The East Bay Redwoods are an isolated population of coast redwoods that exist a considerable distance inland from the coast in the Berkeley Hills in western Contra Costa County, California. Stands of Sequoia sempervirens, the Coast Redwood, occur on the west coast from Big Sur to extreme southwestern Oregon. Their preferred habitat is the temperate and perennially foggy western slopes of the California Coast Ranges; a reliance on marine climates generally restricts their range to a narrow band along the central and northern coasts of California.
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