Today it’s trails and open space — but what did this SLO hill look like a century ago?
Even great philosophers offer DIY advice: Confucius said, “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
It is usually pursuit of a buck, and not philosophy, however that destroys mountains.
Morro Rock, Cerro Romauldo and Bishop Peak were blasted and quarried in the early 20th century.
The First Presbyterian Church and Carnegie Library/History Center are among the landmarks built with the ebony Bishop Peak stone.
Many county hills have been gouged with chromium or mercury mines, and there was even a brief gold rush to the La Panza hills area near the Carrizo Plain. Some of the biggest mining operations were for fill dirt.
As technology became more efficient, it was easier to take bigger chunks — though at the most iconic peaks the mining was halted before the mountain was destroyed.
Not so for Terrace Hill.
A San Luis Obispo report identifies the hill as part of the chain of Morros that stretch from Islay Hill to Morro Rock, eroded cores of former volcanoes.
It is better known as a place people took pictures from, not pictures of. Iconic views of the more photogenic volcanic plugs, Cerro San Luis and Bishop Peak have long been viewed with the town nestled in the valley below.
The view from the top has changed in two ways: The town grows as the decades roll by, and the hilltop sinks.
Photographer Brian Lawler discovered 60 feet were lopped off the top of the Terrace Hill
Lawler was trying to duplicate an image from 1930. He discovered, with geometrical calculations, he needed to rent a lift to get his camera back to the spot where Frank Aston had shot his 1930 image.
The missing dirt is now under Highway 101, French Hospital and other places according to a previous Tribune article by Gabby Ferreira.
An engraving from 1877 included in a San Luis Obispo city report shows a conical Terrace Hill, perhaps with a secondary lower peak downhill from the top.
Artists renderings may have taken some liberties but there is no resemblance to the flat-top-helicopter-landing-pad shape that exists today.
In 1877, a developer mapped home lots in concentric rings up the hillside, as part of the Buena Vista addition to the city.
The upper hillside portion of the development never took root. The location was far from downtown, water service was anemic and the developer suffered financial setbacks. The hill, with up to 50% slopes, would also be difficult to keep from slipping downhill if it were built on.
The developer anticipated the arrival of the railroad, naming one of the un-built streets Leland. (Leland Stanford was one of one of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Big Four founders, a governor and U.S. senator.)
After the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1894, the hillside would be bathed in smoke from an active maintenance yard.
A 1953 photo of the San Luis Obispo County Health Department building shows the hill with cattle fencing around a gravel pit that has stunted the hilltop.
After the last gravel mining leveled a parking lot at French Hospital, the remaining almost 23-acre property became open space in 1986 with public trails.
There don’t seem to to be as many inspirational sayings about filling in ravines as there are about moving mountains.
