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Area description and history
The wooded
area is the entrance to the Point Loma
lighthouse. In an often repeated interview
with a reporter from the Daily World in
1873, Captain J. C. Bogert said that Point
Loma, and all the rest of the harbor area,
was heavily shaded with big oaks in 1834,
when he first arrived, in the whaler Black
Warrior, and such was still the case when
he returned in 1852 to be local representative
for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.
The reporter or the captain must have
been building up a modest truth into a
good story.
Thirty-odd years after Vancouver's call,
the Frenchman, Duhaut-Cilly, characterized
the available wood that had been mentioned
in a few accounts. He said his ship's
people busied themselves with taking in
supplies of wood which were gathered on
"the barren peninsula making the
southern side of the harbor, where shrubs
and bushes there are cut."
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This wood was, then, brush for galley
fires, and even that apparently was more
plentiful on the far side of the bay than
on the more convenient Point Loma side.
It seems apparent that the whole idea
of a forest on the Point first gained
serious attention as a result of Father
Antonio de la Ascension's description
of the montesillo on the north side of
the harbor, and its rendition in English
as little forest instead of the more likely
little mountain. Evidence and recollections,
which indicated that the area was dotted
at one time with as many live and scrub
oaks as might be expected anywhere in
Southern California, were used to support
the initial premise, once it was made.
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