Eddy Tree Breeding Station

Sixty-five miles east of Sacramento, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, the Institute of Forest Genetics occupies a research campus of sixteen buildings, a nursery and an arboretum. Seattle lumberman James G. Eddy founded it in 1925 as the Eddy Tree Breeding Station, funding it personally for ten years before giving it to the United States in 1935. It is described as the first institution in the world devoted solely to forest genetics and tree breeding. The arboretum holds about 70 percent of the world's pine species and some of the oldest man-made pine hybrids. Between 1935 and 1938, Civilian Conservation Corps crews working with Works Progress Administration support built most of the present facilities, including the brown-sided, cedar-shingled administration building, staff house, superintendent's house and rubble-stone pumphouse. Stone curbs, circular drives and a formal landscape plan tie the buildings together. The station still carries out the research for which it was founded, and its buildings retain their original appearance despite repairs made around 1975.