The Burlingame Voice

Caltrain give the eucs a major haircut

In a classic case of closing the barn door after the cows have departed, Caltrain has done a "hard prune" of the remaining eucalyptus trees along the railroad right of way.  Of course, doing this before the massive storms and wind that we had in January would have reduced the wind load on the trees and possibly prevented the track closures we endured.  Better late than never I suppose, but one hopes they realize a hard prune means the foliage comes back strong.  Better put another trim on the calendar for October or November 2023.

Update:  In a classic case of what happens when you assume something--you make an ass of you and me--I stand corrected on who closed the barn door.  I'm told this part of the euc grove is actually owned by the city unlike the part of the grove that is north of Oak Grove; which is Caltrain's and some other agencies' section.  These had been pruned a bit but never topped and thus were quite tall.  I'll leave the title of the post as is to avoid confusion and so it's clear where we are talking about.

B'game History thru Gabriel Moulin's lens

It was standing room only for the quarterly Burlingame Historical Society meeting Tuesday night in the Lane Room.  More than 100 people showed up to hear local historian Joanne Garrison describe photographer Gabriel Moulin's documentation of the early days of the Easton Addition as part of the effort to sell building lots around Hillside Dr.  The genesis of the presentation was a book of said photographs that was donated to the Society.  That kicked off Joanne's effort to take current day matching photos to show the similarities and the changes.  Over 50 minutes, she added details about the Mills, Easton and Howard families--the original land owners in B'game.

The crowd included 17 descendants of Moulin, some of whom travelled from as far away as San Diego, plus a number of local residents of the Hillside-Summit-Canyon area.  Ms. Garrison was able to locate several houses that still exist on Cortez and Cabrillo, but the sad news that an important one on Hillside is schedule for scraping and sub-dividing was the downer of the night.  As the saying goes, "You'll miss it when it's gone".

It was great to see so many people come out to learn about and appreciate B'game history.  Here are the tram tracks going up Hillside drive that carried potential buyers.