page_title: Axel Erlandson
section_title: "The Lost World" and beyond
hierarchical_section_title: Axel Erlandson / "The Lost World" and beyond
context_page_description: Axel Erlandson was a Swedish American farmer who shaped trees as a hobby, and opened a horticultural attraction in 1947 advertised as "See the World's Strangest Trees Here," and named "The Tree Circus."
  The trees appeared in the column of Robert Ripley's Believe It or Not! twelve times. Erlandson sold his attraction shortly before his death. The trees were moved to Gilroy Gardens in 1985.
context_section_description: In 1963, Erlandson sold the property for $12,000, to Larry and Peggy Thompson. They kept Erlandson as a hired caretaker. Erlandson died the following year in Capitola, California. Larry and Peggy Thompson had created and featured 25 to 30 enormous realistic life-sized models of many different species of dinosaurs, which attracted the attention of the passing traffic, installed a stream, and prepared to expand the attraction to several times its original size.  They named the whole park "The Lost World." They renamed the grove of Axel Erlandson's Tree Circus to "The Enchanted Forest".
  Larry Thompson died before The Lost World could open. Peggy Thompson, left to raise three small children, managed to open the park successfully for a few years. She then tried to sell and the new owners defaulted.  Subsequent lease owners went in and out of business.
  In 1977 the property was purchased for commercial development by Robert Hogan and the trees were scheduled to be bulldozed. Mark Primack, a young architect, began documenting the trees and their story and received an art grant to draw and record them as they were. Joseph Cahill, a landscape designer, paid Hogan $12,000 for the trees and was given two and a half years to move them. Cahill cleaned up the site, and "Suddenly the good citizens of Santa Cruz and Scotts Valley were upset." A committee called the Friends of Scotts Valley Tree Circus was formed by Joe Cucchiara to keep the old trees put.  At times Primack and his friends risked arrest for trespassing in order to water and feed the trees. Primack was quoted as saying "I know of no other single person who has taken ornamental grafting to such an extreme, it is not just an oddity. It demonstrates an intriguing option for improving our environment by creating an absolutely unique space of living sculpture." Efforts to have the trees declared historical or a cultural resource failed and Cahill's window for moving the trees closed. Hogan's plan for development did not materialize.
caption: Cube Tree
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