In case you've wondered why there's a place called Christmas Tree Point, and a street on Twin Peaks named Christmas Tree Point Road, it's that time of year to recount the story behind this.

Yes, San Francisco has a spot that remains on maps called Christmas Treet Point, as well as that road named for it, despite the fact that this hilltop on Twin Peaks has not seen a Christmas tree lit on it for 75 years.

It is certainly a visible spot that would make for a festive tree installation, and that was the idea behind the original Christmas tree installed there in 1927, spearheaded by the city's former newspaper of record, the San Francisco Examiner. The Examiner announced its plans that year to install a tree on Twin Peaks, and as the Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub recounts for us this week, big-money interests and City Hall got involved, helping to fund the cutting down and transportation of a giant, 120-foot tree from Mendocino.

That tree proved so massive that it had to be cut into parts with all of its limbs removed, and then reassambled like a Lincoln Log structure with hole drilled in the trunk for the formerly attached branches to stick out of. Once decorated, the tree apparently still looked quite spectacular. It was lit up until 3 am each night, and reportedly could be seen from Marin County and across the East Bay.

What follows is a very San Francisco story that you might even find surprising given the timeframe. As this historical account on OpenSFHistory tells it, and as Hartlaub also explains, the Examiner Christmas Tree, as it was called, only lasted for a couple of years — even though it was popular, and there was even a gateway set up at the bottom of what's now Christmas Tree Point Road for visitors to get up close to the tree for a look.

The tree returned in 1928 and again in 1929, the year the Depression began. But its first couple years were met with loud protest from St. Francis Wood resident and local tree lover Charles “Sandy” Pratt. Pratt, a gravel magnate with a business in Santa Cruz, enjoyed decorating a redwood in his own yard every year with strings of lights for the Christmas season. He scorned the practice of cutting down fir trees to decorate and then discard them every year as a "slaughter of the innocents," and he founded a group called the Outdoor Christmas Tree Association that handed out redwood seeds around the Bay for people to grow their own, permanent Christmas trees that wouldn't need cutting.

He also, according to his 1958 obituary, would dig up redwood seedlings from forests to give to friends at the holidays.

Pratt's fight against the Examiner Tree was celebrated by the rival San Francisco Chronicle, per Hartlaub, ahd Pratt then successfully lobbied Golden Gate Park Superintendent John McLaren, then 82, to start decorating the 120-foot Monterey cypress outside his office at the edge of Golden Gate Park, on Stanyan Street.

Uncle John's Tree, as it's become known, was first lit up with twinkling lights on December 20, 1929, and a new city tradition was born. That became the city's "official" Christmas tree as of 1931, and that was pretty much it for the Examiner Tree — the funding of which might also have dried up during the Depression.

Per the Chronicle, the San Francisco Police Department, looking to steal some thunder from the San Francisco Fire Department, installed a Christmas tree one more time at Christmas Tree Point in 1950, after the SFFD started their annual contest decorating fire houses around the city.