Dr Forbes' Olive Grove LbNA #41193 (ARCHIVED)

Dr Robert Forbes was the first dean of Agriculture at the University of Arizona, 100 years ago. He traveled to arid areas all over the world searching for plants that might do well in Tucson’s harsh desert climate. Around 1911 he went to an olive experimental station in Algeria and returned to Tucson with over 20 varieties of olive trees to try out. They had poetic Arabic names like Egg of the Pigeon (a very large olive especially grown for stuffing with other delicacies) and Tooth of the Camel (with a knobbly shape). They were tiny and tasty, huge and meaty, there was even one variety that had no bitterness, and could be eaten straight from the tree. Many of these were planted on the campus of the University, but Dr Forbes also gave 19 trees to his friend George Roskruge, a prominent surveyor in Tucson from the 1890s-1920s. Mr Roskruge lived at 318 E 13th Street (the house, an example of Queen Anne style, was built in 1898, and designed by the same architects who designed Old Main on the U of A campus and the courthouse in Florence AZ), and planted a grove of mixed olive trees in the large garden between his house and S. Fourth Ave. That garden now has a house and parking lot, but there remain 13 of Dr Forbes original experimental olive trees, and they’re finally getting good care after languishing for decades.

The best way to find the letterbox is explorer style, like Dr Forbes would: walk there, down Railroad Avenue from First Cicada. Look in the olive tree closest to Mr Roskruge’s house (it's in the neighboring yard now), a couple of feet up off the ground in a gnarly crevice. What on earth is that rock doing in a tree trunk?

Enjoy your visit to the Olive Grove.
Be sly. Be surreptitious. Be secretive. Be subtle. Be sneaky.
Let me know if this box needs attention. Please record your find at www.letterboxing.org/ or at www.atlasquest.com/
Have fun out there!