I WAS HERE

Image courtesy of Ross Eric Gibson

Images of the Calling Card Tree today - Author's Personal Collection

"Every person coming out of [or going into] the Big Trees pins a card upon one of them. As there are no limbs, the placing of them high up is a difficult task. Some one had put his card twenty-five feet above the ground."

A visitor from Vermont disapprovingly commented about a "… man who was pulling himself up its burly side to pin his name high up among other names written on card or paper and fastened to the bark with pins, hair-pins, wooden pegs, &c. I cannot say they improve the appearance of the tree for those who like nature unadorned." 

The Calling Card Tree is located just outside the Redwood Loop Trail, just to the right of the dirt pathways leading up the embankment. When you take a close look, you can see nails and thumb tacks, and even small bits of paper, still attached to its bark.

Sources: “Notes by a Tourist – The Trip to Santa Cruz Across the Mountains,” Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, August 8, 1874,1:7-8; “The Santa Cruz Big Trees,” Express and Standard, [Newport, Vermont], September 26, 1876, 2:4.