El Palo Alto

El Palo Alto is a Sequoia sempervirens (coast redwood tree) located in El Palo Alto Park on the banks of San Francisquito Creek in Palo Alto, California, United States. El Palo Alto means the tall stick in Spanish.

El Palo Alto is currently 110 feet (33.5 meters) in height, down from 162.2 feet (49.4 meters) in 1814, its top progressively dying from 1865 to 1955 from lowering of the water table so that its roots could no longer reach water. The landmark redwood is 90 inches (2.3 meters) in diameter, and has a crown spread of 40 feet (12 meters). In 1955, an increment boring of the tree rings was taken and the tree's age was accurately determined to be 1,015 years. El Palo Alto originally had 3 trunks, but no one knows what happened to the first trunk. It remains as a stump attached to the current trunk. The second trunk fell in an 1886 flood and windstorm in the San Francisquito arroyo. It downed the second trunk.

The tree is California Historical Landmark No. 2 (number 1 is the Old Customhouse in Monterey). It is recognized by the National Arborist Association and International Society of Arboriculture for its historical significance as "a campsite for the Portola Expedition Party of 1769"; being frequented by the Costanoan/Ohlone Indians; and for its use as a sighting tree by surveyors plotting out El Camino Real. The tree is depicted on the city of Palo Alto's official seal and on the seal of Stanford University. It is the origin of the city's name.

A plaque at the base of the tree bears the following inscription:

It was two years after Padre Palou's visit that Padre Font, on the De Anza Expedition's way back to Mexico after founding San Francisco, measured the giant redwood "five and a half yards around" in his diary on March 30, 1776. Also at El Palo Alto, de Anza and Font found the wooden cross that Palou had placed two years earlier, but de Anza decided to move the mission location to Santa Clara because San Francisquito Creek's water was too low in the dry season.

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