Vizcaíno-Serra Oak

After initially failing to find it, he was successful in May 1770 after following Junípero Serra's suggestion to look for the large oak tree described by Vizcaíno.

With financial help from Harry Ashland Greene, the trunk and with some of its lower branches was preserved with crude oil and creosote and the parts which had been eaten away were filled with concrete.

At Monterey, June 3rd, 1770 the ceremony of taking possession of California for Spain was enacted by Father Junipero Serra under the shade of this tree, placed here for preservation by R.M.

[4] In 1908, a granite Celtic cross with a bas-relief portrait of Serra sculpted by Douglas Tilden was erected near the original site of the tree by the art collector James A. Murray and is now a California Historical Landmark.

He took a keen interest in Monterey's history and owned one of the three paintings by Léon Trousset depicting Serra's first Mass beneath the oak tree.

Its artist, scientific illustrator Stephanie Rozzo, based the painting on late 19th-century photographs of the tree and an 1876 drawing by Jules Tavernier.

In the 1870s Trousset created three romanticized depictions (two in oil and one in watercolor) of Junipero Serra celebrating Mass beneath the tree on June 3, 1770.

Trousset's large-scale 1877 version, Father Serra Celebrates Mass at Monterey, is on display in the Carmel Mission museum.