PARK AND CEMETERY 
and Landscape Gardening. 
VOL. XIV CHICAGO, OCTOBER, 1904 No. 8 
Alum RocK ParK, San Jose, Cal. 
By Eva E. Stahl. 
Nestled in the mountain 
side, seven miles from San 
Jose, Cal., lies the most 
unique, if not the most at- 
tractive city park in Amer- 
ica. It is a grand canyon 
in miniature; a bit of wild- 
wood known as Alum Rock 
Park. It is the bed of Pen- 
etencia Creek, which flows 
over rocks and rapids, 
through gorges and pools, 
in its race to level land and 
the sea. Two branches of 
the creek enter the canyon. 
One rises in Halls Valley, 
near the shadows of Mt. 
Hamilton, is fed by many 
springs, and comes tum- 
bling into the reservation 
over a perpendicular wall of rock, a volume of water 
ten or twelve feet wide. The other arm of this moun- 
tain stream rises in the Calaveras hills to the north, and 
trickling over its bed reaches and drops over a preci- 
pice nearly a hundred feet to the canyon beneath. The 
two streams meet near the upper end of what is called 
the picnic ground. Above their confluence either 
branch may be followed further into the mountains, 
until a wall of rock cuts off investigation. The 
southern or larger stream seeks bed along, compara- 
tively, smoothly undulating land, while the upper creek 
comes swiftly coursing down sharp, steep bluffs, dash- 
ing its waters to a filmy spray over precipices or lash- 
ing them to foam against rocks in the deep pools. 
Alum Rock Park contains about 580 acres. It takes 
its name from a great rocky bluff which juts out over 
the canyon and stands a silent sentinel at the gateway 
of the park. Among the rocks of this cliff is a sub- 
stance, white in color, said to be alum in its natural 
state. The floor or level of the reservation varies 
from 40 to 100 feet in width. On either side are high 
rocky bluffs, or sloping hillsides covered with brush 
and trees. In spring time and early summer the 
slopes are briiliant with the wild flowers of California, 
and even from the rocks and sands of the cliffs, trailing 
vines and blue and red and yellow blossoms nod their 
heads in the bright sunshine. 
Caretakers have not attempted to assist nature, and 
excepting a small grove of eucalyptus trees, a plot 
near the cottages, and perhaps a dozen redwoods along 
a pathway, the trees and shrubs of the park are of the 
native mountain growth. Tall sycamores clasp arms 
with sturdy oaks ; madrona, elm, bay, manzanita and 
iaurel crowd each other in sunny places. Willows 
wave their graceful boughs over the stream and on 
the level great live oaks spread gnarled and twisted 
branches over ideal resting places. The toyon bush 
or tree grows luxuriantly on the hillsides, and at Christ- 
mas time it produces a wealth of bright red berries, 
known as the “California holly.” In the thickets are 
wild berry and bramble bushes, and — the serpent of 
this Eden — the poison oak. 
Of greater interest than all the other attractions of 
Alum Rock Park are its mineral springs. At a not 
far distant day their medicinal value will be world- 
known. The springs are numberless and are found 
everywhere, on mountain side and level. They are of 
soda, sulphur, compositions of magnesium, carbonate 
of soda and iron. Waters of any single quality are 
not found in a special locality ; a soda spring will gush 
from one side of a rock, while iron or sulphur may 
trickle from under the other. From one hillside, fall- 
ing into the same stone basin, flow three streams of 
water. One is strongly impregnated with sulphur, 
another is a soda water, while between the two the 
third stream flows, black as ink. 
The springs are so many and of such varied qual- 
ities that it would seem that handfuls of all the min- 
erals used in the creation of the world had been thrown 
into the hills of this little canyon, and that underneath 
its crests of earth there flowed a mighty river, so im- 
patient to reach the light that it burst through every 
