Christmas Tree Lane
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Christmas Tree Lane (Via dell'Albero di Natale)
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Christmas Tree Lane, view looking south down Santa Rosa Avenue from Altadena Drive
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| Location | Santa Rosa Ave. between Altadena Drive and Woodbury Road Altadena, California |
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| Coordinates | 34°11′25″N 118°08′09″W / 34.19028°N 118.13583°WCoordinates: 34°11′25″N 118°08′09″W / 34.19028°N 118.13583°W |
| Area | 9.6 acres (3.9 ha) |
| Built | 1885 |
| NRHP Reference # | 90001444 |
| CHISL # | 990 |
| Added to NRHP | September 13, 1990 |
Christmas Tree Lane (Italian: Via dell'Albero di Natale) is a 0.7-mile (1.1 km) boulevard of deodar cedar trees in Altadena, California. The trees on the Lane, Santa Rosa Avenue, have been lighted annually as a Christmas Holiday display since 1920. The association that runs it claims it "is the oldest large-scale Christmas lighting spectacle in the United States". Christmas Tree Lane was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1990, the same year it was also designated as California Historical Landmark No. 990.
Santa Rosa Avenue in Altadena is one of many north-south running streets named for female Spanish saints. Others are Santa Anita, Santa Clara (becomes El Molino Avenue), and Santa Marguerita (becomes Fair Oaks Avenue). At the head of Santa Rosa Avenue was a large parcel reserved for the would-be mansion of Altadena founder John P. Woodbury. His brother, Frederick, had already established a home at the head of Santa Clara Avenue, now one of the oldest houses in Altadena. Santa Rosa Avenue was to be the main approach to John's mansion from the Pasadena city limit. In 1883, returning from a trip to Italy, John described a most impressive stand of trees he saw there, the deodars (Cedrus deodara, the Tree of God), indigenous to the Himalayas. John returned with a handful of seeds from the trees. After having consulted with an arborist friend of his at the Department of Agriculture, who assured him the trees should do well in Southern California, he had Frederick plant them in a nursery behind his house. In two years the young trees were transplanted to Santa Rosa Avenue, in all some 150 trees.
The work on Santa Rosa Avenue was carried out by Frederick's ranch foreman Tom Hoag. This included the employment of a large Chinese labor crew not only to perform the transplanting, but also to lay the river-rock-lined gutters which have become an important part of the lane's historical landscape. The lane finished out at .7 mile (GPS measurement).
Because of the ensuing land bust of 1888, John Woodbury's home was never realized. But the Santa Rosa deodars flourished in the decades to come.
From 1906 to 1909, Santa Rosa was a part of the Pasadena-Altadena Uphill Race, a sport of the new high-speed automobile. Entries consisted of some of the latest race cars of the period, including the Stutz Bearcat, and Barney Oldfield's Ford No. 999. The racers rallied on Los Robles Avenue south of Woodbury and raced up to the corner, making a hard right then a hard left up Santa Rosa. The dirt roads were rugged and in one instance a female rider was tossed from the car. From that point on ladies were prohibited from riding along. The competitions only ran for four years.
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Wikipedia