Ugly Angel: Abbot Kinney and the Squirrels

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I assumed that Abbot Kinney, namesake of the hippest street in Venice, had been a late 19th-century abbot named Kinney (Francis Xavier Kinney, no doubt), the genial head of a Catholic religious order of some sort—perhaps a not-so-cloistered group of surfer-monks based somewhere within view of present-day Muscle Beach.

But no. Abbot Kinney was very worldly New Jersey–born, European-educated businessman, politician, real estate developer, and—perhaps most importantly—conservationist.

Abbot Kinney, 1850–1920

This urban, urbane answer to John Muir was the mastermind behind Venice of America, a high-minded attempt to re-create Renaissance Venice—the one of John Ruskin's dreams—on the California coast below Santa Monica. The project failed financially and, far from becoming a meeting of great minds, devolved into Coney Island West, complete with nickel freak shows . . . which continue today in public for free.

Never mind all that, however, because Kinney the botanist had already published, in 1895, an enduring, highly readable yet scientific study of the genus Eucalyptus, which is still available in a facsimile edition.

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A great fan of this multi-purpose Australian import, Kinney, while serving as a superintendent of roads in Santa Monica, planted eucalyptus trees as windbreaks, for erosion protection and shade, and as purely esthetic landscaping elements.

His nemesis was the common ground squirrel. The pesky rodents would gnaw off the young trees at the root crown and leave them for dead. Kinney attributed the behavior to a genetic disposition among ground squirrels to detest forested regions. His vengeance was swift:

It may be interesting to some prospective planter to know how the squirrels were conquered. I poisoned them with strychnine in watermelons for six miles in a strip sixteen hundred feet wide, then had boys cover the [squirrel] holes. All the holes that were reopened within ten days were reclosed, after placing a piece of cotton saturated with bi-sulphide of carbon inside. . . . The trees on these six miles of road are now safe, and make a most pleasing difference in the appearance and comfort of the roads.

One doubts that PETA, much less the EPA, would today approve of Kinney's approach. But I do still love a nice stand of eucalyptus, as much as Kinney did.