ExFlorations - Palm Trees with a Historical Twist

Some of the earliest Franciscan padres of the Mission Era in California were behind the process of bringing the original [non-native] palm trees to Southern California areas that included what is now the San Fernando Valley.  It's reasonable to believe that the pair of palm trees seen in the images below were transplanted into the original olive orchard at Mission San Fernando prior to 1830. While the perspective of each image varies, the subject palm trees were located just inside the adobe walls that originally surrounded the orchard and they can be pinpointed by their orientation to the northwest corner of the ancient church structure.

This c.1890-1900 photograph was taken within the old olive orchard and shows the surrounding adobe wall when it was still mostly intact.  The original, Mission-era olive trees had long since been chopped down to [roughly] six-foot stumps, and those that survived had regrown as seen in the examples on the left and right.  The subject pair of palm trees stand just within the wall, and appear to be in good shape.  In the background, the west elevation and northwest corner of the c.1804 Mission San Fernando church are visible.

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This early aerial photograph was taken shortly after the initial (mid-1920s) development of  Brand Park and Memory Garden on the south side of the ex-Mission property directly across the boulevard from the large, two-story Convento building.  The outline of the old olive orchard and the pair of aged palm trees (behind and to the left of the dilapidated church) are clearly seen in the upper, center portion of the image.

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This aerial photograph was taken on May 3, 1955 following both a major restoration project at the Mission, and construction of the adjacent Our Lady Queen of Angels Junior Seminary facilities which were eventually redeveloped into the Bishop Alemany High School campus and a regional archdiocesan office. A rough outline of the original olive orchard (sans its encompassing wall) is still discernible near the center of the image. Although only one of the ancient palms northwest of the church is clearly visible on the outskirts of the new Catholic cemetery, it is quite possible that both of the subject pair had survived to this point. Further development of the cemetery included removing the obscure, historic palms trees and transplanting modern replacements.

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