It should be made clear that two missions were established here, Santa Clara and San José, and that the latter was not at San José, as some maps represent it, but some fourteen miles distant from the town.
PALO ALTO
Palo Alto (high stick, or tree), in Santa Clara County, sixteen miles northwest of San José, once a stock farm where blooded horses were raised, now best known as the site of the Leland Stanford Junior University, is said to have received its name from a tall redwood tree on the San Francisquito (little St. Francis) creek. This tree stands just a few feet from the railroad bridge near Palo Alto station, and is said by old residents to have originally been in the form of a twin tree, one of the twins having been cut down. The trees of this species received the name Palo Colorado (red stick, or tree), from the Portolá party, whose attention was attracted by their uncommon size and the peculiar reddish color of the wood, and the honor of their discovery may justly be awarded to Gaspar de Portolá, since he seems to have been the first white man to make report of having seen them.
This place was named by the Anza expedition of 1775-1776, and it seems rather strange that no mention is made in the diaries of the fact that the tree was a twin. Father Pedro Font, who accompanied the expedition, says: “From a slight eminence I here observed the lay of the port from this point and saw that its extremity lay to the east-southeast. I also noticed that a very high spruce tree, which is to be seen at a great distance, rising up like a great tower, from the Llano de los Robles,—it stands on the banks of the Arroyo de San Francisco, later on I measured its height—lay to the southeast.” Further on in the diary he says: “Beside this stream is the redwood tree I spoke of yesterday: I measured its height with the graphometer which they lent me at the mission of San Carlos, and, according to my reckoning, found it to be some fifty yards high, more or less; the trunk was five yards and a half in circumference at the base, and the soldiers said that there were still larger ones in the mountains.”—(Translation edited by Frederick J. Teggart.) This description of Father Font’s gives rise to a strong suspicion that the tree now so highly venerated is not the original Palo Alto from which the place takes its name. The name was first applied to a land grant.
THE PALO COLORADO (REDWOOD TREE).
“First observed and named by Gaspar de Portolá.”