Trees of the City
A fascinating look back: Trees of the City (1904) (PDF), a brochure by City Engineer W.E.Cutshaw detailing his thoughts on tree planting and listing specific trees planted over the past year.
Much thanks to Selden Richardson for sending this in!
I see trees and bushes planted in Jefferson Park and Chimborazo Park. It also lists “Marshall Square”. Wasn’t that the old name for Libby Hill Park?
This document certainly underscores the importance of trees to Cutshaw as an integral part of city planning. This was especially important in pre-air conditioning Richmond, I guess, and had significance for horse-drawn transportation, too, trying to keep hard-working horses cool in the summer heat.
You’ll notice that the switchback road below the park house that once led from Fulton Valley up to Chimbarazo Park is deliberately lined with trees, providing important shade to hot animals, and there is a fountain / horse trough to service man and beast making the climb up to Church Hill with heavy cargo from the docks.
We have AC and all the horses are gone now, but we sure could use some attention to the tree planting agenda these days. My contacts with the Urban Foresters for my street has been less than satisfactory. A dead tree was removed, leaving a stump a foot tall to stumble over and trying to contact that guy is impossible to see about a replacement tree. Cutshaw would have that slack bastard gone over with a hickory switch cut from the ample tree cultivation area out by what is now the Carillon.