After our meal at a Ventura restaurant called Two Trees, we asked the waiter about the name. He told us the story of two oak trees high on the hills behind Ventura, an iconic landmark that could be seen from the harbour. He said the trees burned in the Thomas Fire of December 2017, but that the community raised the funds to replant them. I asked what kind of oaks they were, but he didn’t know.
I did some googling when I got home. Turns out the story is slightly more convoluted. For starters, they were blue gum eucalypts, not native oaks, originally planted in 1898 along with 11 others. Several months before the Thomas Fire, one of the last two trees was felled by strong winds (it was already dead at the time). So then it was just Lone Tree. And maybe a recently planted sapling (sources vary, reported timelines are inconsistent). It seems that the trees have been replanted multiple times over the decades, perhaps most recently in 2018. Venturans consider the trees iconic, and want to protect, nurture and, yes, replace them as needed.
Now I need to look out for this landmark, which I confess I’ve never noticed.
hashiworks 