Giant Valley Oak Goes Down in Los Olivos

The giant valley oak on Grand Avenue in Los Olivos was a big tree when Roeser’s drugstore opened 40 years ago, but early Saturday morning, the limbs of the 50-foot tree fell victim to gravity, toppling mostly into the street and leaving about 10 feet of the trunk upright. It missed the drugstore — now the Gallery Los Olivos — but a big limb landed on the Wildflower Women Boutique in a wing of the building, knocking a hole in the roof. Fortunately, no one was injured.

Firefighters got the call at 7:53 a.m., Captain Scott Safechuck reported on August 5, and they chainsawed the fallen branches in order to get them out of the street before the weekend got underway. A water main was also reported broken.

Toni Coble, who manages the buildings for the Roeser family, said it took a crane to lift the big limb from the roof. Most of the U-shaped building was intact, she said, except for the clothing boutique, which was likely to need a rebuild.

The Alexander and Wayne Tasting Room did not answer its phone, but it might be able to open soon as it had a separate entrance, surmised Paul Roark, who manages Gallery Los Olivos. He thought the gallery would be able to open by Wednesday. Roark recalled that his parents had similar trees in the Santa Ynez Valley with similar problems and estimated the tree that had bathed the gallery in shade to be about 300 years old.

Another member of the artist-owned and -operated gallery, Patti Robbins, wondered if the elf’s house had survived. Coble said she wasn’t sure, but she laughed at the memory. Bill Etling’s real estate office was located there at one time, and he’d whimsically placed a little door beneath a jutting chunk of bark at the base of the tree.

Contacted by phone, Etling said he’d had an office beside the tree for many years and had built the door for a hole in its base. The gnome house was still there, a little worse for wear, a day and a half ago, he said. Inside the door was a mirror from an old Volvo, he added: “When you open the door, you see your(s)elf.”