Christmas Tree Lane

Christmas Tree Lane is a 0.7mi 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.HistoryOriginSanta 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.