A 1990s Booklet titled “Downtown Tour of Landmark Trees” (257)

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Just over 20 years ago, City of Davis staff teamed with volunteer tree activists to produce a pocket-size booklet titled Downtown Tour of Landmark Trees. I reproduce it here.

One can see that it chronicles the locations and features of 16 trees in the new University City “Downtown” that have survived from the Ag Village and College Town eras.

In looking at the booklet after not having read it in a long time, I was struck with how so-long-ago and out-of-date it appears. What was once new, has become quite old, even though now “classic” and “historic.”

It is also true, I think, that it would no longer occur to anyone that a booklet of this sort was a good idea or even possible to produce. The resources and will for such work have ebbed and civic energy has turned in other directions (cf. http://www.davishistorytoday.org/2014/06/davis-enterprise-traces-history-of.html  ).

Let me be clear that I present this document as an artifact of Davis history that represents the Davis past in a certain way, not as an account of Davis historical facts that is true. In fact, I think it contains at least one major historical error (in the passage highlighted in green on page 4) and there may be others.

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