The giant Moreton Bay Fig tree just north of the San Diego Natural History Museum was not always so huge!
Years before any of us were born, this historic tree was planted in Balboa Park for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. Visitors to the exposition might have viewed the tiny tree in one of the flower beds in a large formal garden. The garden stretched north of the Southern California Counties Building, which was later replaced by the Natural History Museum–the building visible in the above photograph.
I’ve found two images which show the young tree in the formal garden. Arrows have been added to mark the position of the small tree.
The first image is from a sign located under today’s Moreton Bay Fig, next to the observation platform. The second image is an old photograph–one of many century-old Balboa Park photographs that I posted here.
Did you know Balboa Park’s immense Moreton Bay Fig has a sister tree in National City? See my blog post concerning that here!
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