Drought, Vandals Endanger 2 Landmarks : Two Trees: A Ventura arborist says carvers are jeopardizing the chances of the well-known hilltop eucalyptuses to survive the lack of water.

Ventura’s most dominant hilltop landmark--a towering pair of blue gum eucalyptus trees known simply as Two Trees--is facing its most serious threat in 30 years because of the county’s continuing drought.

The trees, all that remains of a eucalyptus grove that has been decimated by brush fire and repeated ax attacks, will probably survive their latest crisis, just as they have weathered other threats, according to the city’s top tree expert.

But City Arborist Jerry Rivard said their chances of surviving the long period of little rainfall are diminished because local hikers continue to carve messages in the tree trunks whenever they make the hilltop climb.

One of the trees was carved into by “J.M.R.” as recently as “6-18-90.” On the other, in letters the size of a small street sign, “JESUS LOVES ALL” has been carved a full two inches into the bark.

The combination of no rain and continued damage from tree carvers could be deadly to Two Trees, Rivard said.

“Trees are different than people,” he said. “People can replace damaged tissue with new tissue, but trees can’t. The more energy a trees spends in walling off the wounds, less energy that remains available for its normal processes.”

Without water, Rivard said, the trees cannot manufacture the sugars and carbohydrates that energize them. And the two trees’ roots are so deep that they cannot be watered with a bucket, Rivard added.

“At this point it’s best to leave them alone,” the tree expert said after examining a handful of their leathery leaves. “They’ve been through a lot of droughts and a lot of different conditions. Depending on how long this one lasts, my guess is that they’ll probably make it.”

If they do, it will be further testimony to the toughness of the trees that have become a living monument for many Venturans.

On a barren hilltop along the ridge of Barlow Canyon, the trees have endured harsh and arid conditions before. With only shrubs growing for miles around them, they are visible from as far away as Oxnard.

Local historians trace the trees’ origins to 1898, when San Buenaventura was a little town of fewer than 4,000. Chumash Indians sold their baskets on the steps of the mission and grizzly bears preyed on livestock.

That year, horticulturist Joseph Sexton--a pioneer who helped establish avocados, soft-shelled walnuts and pampas grass in the region--decided to plant a few eucalyptus trees on top of the mountain he owned.

Joseph Marron, Sexton’s neighbor and part-time helper, actually did the planting and watering until the trees were strong enough to survive on their own. There were 13 trees to begin with.

A few years later, a brush fire killed all but five of the trees. The five were seriously damaged shortly after World War II by hatchet-wielding vandals, but somehow they survived.

Ten years later, vandals attacked them again with axes on Halloween night and succeeded in killing three. The two survivors were badly mutilated.

Five Trees became two for a couple of years, but then became Five Trees again in 1956, thanks to Motor Mart operator Marcel (Slim) Sap and two friends, who planted three more eucalyptus trees and nursed the wounded ones for weeks.

“We just kinda felt that the landmark was important to Ventura and wanted to see it restored,” Sap told a reporter in September, 1956.

Vandals struck again soon thereafter, and Five Trees became three. Not much is known about that attack, except that two of the original trees and one of the young ones survived it.

Ventura Councilman Gary Tuttle, who has been hiking to Two Trees since his high school days, said he knows the identity of one of the vandals but will not reveal it.

“He’s a well-known former athlete who works in a local high school,” Tuttle said. “He did it as a young kid and regretted it for the rest of his life.”

Tuttle’s colleague Jim Monahan, also a native Venturan, wants to know the former athlete’s name. “Gary ought to ‘fess up . . . . Whoever did it should accept his responsibility because those trees meant a lot to this city.”

By 1966, one of the three remaining trees had died. It remained standing for a while but was burned down years later by a fire started by a careless smoker. The charred tree stump was never removed and remains on the hilltop.

In 1987, the surviving trees were finally recognized as an official county landmark by the County Cultural Heritage Board, which chose to call the landmark Five Trees, as the site was known on navigational charts, even though there no longer were five trees there.

That same year, cattle runners who leased the Two Trees property decided to do something about the vandals.

Back when Two Trees was a grove of 13 trees, Sexton sold his property to Ralph B. Lloyd, who later struck it rich by discovering the Ventura Avenue Oil Field. When Lloyd died, the property became part of the Lloyd Corp.

Thirty-five years ago, the Lloyd Corp. leased the land to ranch hands Rocky Esparza and Toots Jauregui for cattle grazing. Esparza died in 1986 and his former assistant Richard Atmore took over the lease.

It was Atmore who posted the “No Trespassing” signs behind Poinsettia Pavilion on Foothill Road, where two of the three timeworn trails that lead to Two Trees originate.

He never liked having strangers on his property, Atmore said, but it wasn’t until he found one of his horses shot to death beside a trail that he decided to put up the signs.

“I know that 99.9% of the people who go up there are very decent people, but it takes one bad apple to trash the place with beer cans, cut the wire fences or shoot a horse with a .22,” Atmore said.

Besides, Atmore said, his hills are not the safest of places.

“I’ve got 1,500-pound bulls up there, the trail is steep and there’s rattlesnakes. If someone gets hurt, I don’t want to be responsible,” he said.

Atmore said the signs he posted three years ago have cut down the number of visitors from “about 50 or 60 every Saturday and Sunday, to only one or two.”

Poinsettia Pavilion’s maintenance supervisor, Daniel Moreno, said Atmore patrolled the trail “for two or three weeks after his horse got shot, but then he gave up.”

Moreno said about 20 people use the Poinsettia trails leading to Two Trees every weekend. “Some of them go camping and leave their cars in our parking lot for two or three nights,” Moreno said.

The oldest trail leading to Two Trees starts from Consuelo Sauerborn’s back yard off Aliso Road. Sauerborn said she has welcomed hikers for more than 30 years.

“It was like Central Park, I used to call it,” Sauerborn said. “Everybody came through here, just like Central Park.” But about three years ago, she said, most of the people stopped coming, and now she sees only one or two hikers a week. Last month, she said, a woman who lives in Iowa came back after 20 years to visit Two Trees with her young daughter for the first time.

Sauerborn, a widow with seven grown grandchildren, said she used to visit the trees every Sunday and picnic with her husband and kids.

“It’s so beautiful, it’s like being from another world,” she said.