Friendly Plaza is a small park in front of historic Colton Hall and the City Hall of Monterey, California. The brick courtyard of Friendly Plaza was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project and the decorative stone wall around the plaza was also built by the WPA and dedicated around 1930.
Colton Hall is the most important public office building in Monterey County still in continuous use. It has over the years housed Monterey's City Hall, a public school, the county courthouse, the sheriff's office, and Monterey's city police headquarters. The second floor is a museum which was established in 1949.
It was built in Greek Revival style 1847-49 by Walter Colton, who arrived in Monterey as the chaplain on Commodore Robert F. Stockton's vessel. He remained and was named as Monterey's first alcalde (mayor) in the American Period. Colton Hall originally contained rooms downstairs for a public school and a government assembly hall upstairs. It was the site of California's first constitutional convention in 1849. The material used in the building is white stone known as white Monterey shale, quarried from a nearby hill.
California's military governor called for a constitutional convention in Monterey's Colton Hall. The 48 delegates from ten districts met on the upper floor from September 1 to October 15, 1849, to debate and write California's first state constitution. The stairway leading to the convention hall at the time was in the rear of the building. The California Constitution was ratified on October 13, voted on in November of that year, and sent to Congress in January 1850. San Jose was chosen as the seat for the first Legislature.
The Monterey Moon Tree
This unremarkable-looking tree has a remarkable history! On the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, Command Module pilot Stuart Roosa carried hundreds of seeds to the moon in his personal kit. Roosa had been a U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper before he joined NASA and the seeds were part of an experiment to see if exposure to radiation in space would affect their subsequent germination and growth. Seeds were chosen from five different types of trees: Loblolly Pine, Sycamore, Sweetgum, Redwood, and Douglas Fir. Corresponding control seeds were kept on Earth for later comparison. In all, Roosa and the seeds orbited the moon 34 times.
Upon Apollo 14’s return to Earth, the seeds were germinated and after a few years, the Forest Service had over 400 seedlings. Some of these were planted with their earthbound counterparts as controls but most were given away in 1975 and 1976 to many state forestry organizations to be planted as part of the nation’s bicentennial celebration. These trees were southern and western species, so not all states received trees. Monterey’s Moon Tree is a Redwood. A Loblolly Pine was planted at the White House, and trees were planted in Brazil and Switzerland among other places. However, no comprehensive list was ever kept of the disposition of all of the trees so the locations of many of them are unknown.
Incidentally, no significant difference was ever observed between the trees whose seeds were carried into space and those that remained here on Earth.
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To log this virtual, you must send me the information from the 4 stops, otherwise your log will be deleted. Please feel free to post photos of yourself and/or your group, but DO NOT include the answers in your photo.
1) At Waypont 1 - What is the quote on the plaque on the ground that names the sculptor?
2) At Waypoint 2 - Who is the quote's author? (bottom right)
3) At Waypoint 3 - What is the title of this plaque?
4) At Waypoint 4 - What is the date on this plaque?
There are other historic buildings on site - the original Monterey Jail next to Colton Hall, the Gordon House, and the Vasque Adobe are a few of note. I hope you will allow time to explore and enjoy this lovely plaza and surrounding history.
Virtual Rewards 4.0 - 2024-2025
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between January 17, 2024 and January 17, 2025. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 4.0 on the Geocaching Blog.