Mount Sutro

Mount Sutro was not always a forest. Before the eighteen eighties, these hills were largely treeless, consisting of grassy slopes and native coastal scrub that formed a natural barrier between the small settlement of early San Francisco and the vast, sandy wilderness to the west. The landscape changed forever when Adolph Sutro, a wealthy immigrant and former mayor of the city, purchased the land and launched a massive effort to clothe the bare hills in greenery. Starting in eighteen eighty six, he used annual Arbor Day celebrations to direct the planting of thousands of Monterey pine, cypress, and blue gum eucalyptus trees. What you see today is the largest surviving fragment of that ambitious project, which was once so extensive it covered nearly the entire center of the city.