A look back: Who was Luther Burbank?

Luther Burbank’s name adorns buildings, schools, gardens and even the famous potato he developed. But some Santa Rosans have started to second-guess naming one of the city’s elementary school after the famed horticulturalist. Who was Luther Burbank the man, and what is behind the push to rebrand the A Street school that bears his name?

A renowned horticulturist and botanist, Burbank was born in Massachusetts in 1849. He moved to Santa Rosa in 1875 with money he made from selling his Burbank potato, the parent potato of the now widely cultivated russet potato.

Burbank introduced over 800 new plants over the course of his lifetime, according to the Luther Burbank Home & Gardens Association. His fame soared internationally following the publication of his 1893 catalog “New Creations in Fruits and Flowers.”

“I firmly believe from what I have seen that this is the chosen spot of all the earth as far as nature is concerned,” Burbank said about the region. This quotation was printed on the front page of The Press Democrat, just under the newspaper’s nameplate, for years.

Burbank formed friendships with disability rights activist Helen Keller, writer Jack London, yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, business magnate Henry Ford and inventor Thomas Edison. He was also painted by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Historical records, previously misinterpreted, aren’t completely clear on how involved he was with Anti-Chinese Leagues rampant in white communities on the West Coast in the late 19th century. The Feb. 13, 1886 edition of the Sonoma Democrat (which later merged with other newspapers to become The Press Democrat) lists only the surname “Burbank” appointed as a ward committee member of an anti-Chinese group for “Ward 2, south of the creek.”

Burbank did write in 1892 to Thomas J. Geary, a Santa Rosa attorney and congressman who extended the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 by writing the 1892 Geary Act.

In the letter Burbank solicited “Geary’s backing for a plant patent law” and congratulated the congressman for his efforts with the extension of the anti-Chinese immigration law, according to “A Gardener Touched With Genius” by Peter Dreyer.

Controversy around Burbank’s name has been in the news this year. After the community at Luther Burbank Elementary School in Santa Rosa cited lack of evidence to condemn Burbank and voted to keep his name for their school, Santa Rosa City Schools added civil rights leaders Dolores Huerta and George Ortiz in consideration for a name change.

See photos from Luther Burbank’s life in the gallery above.