In the beginning, Redwood Grove was not a redwood grove at all.  

It was, as Berkeley resident Katherine Buss tells it, a spot "with a creek and one redwood tree," a small house shaded by live oak trees, on about six acres.

How it became a redwood grove is a story Buss hopes to tell during a public meeting in Shoup Park at 7 p.m. Thursday. It's one of many stories about the special place her grandmother, Emma Wright Halsey, cultivated.

Buss is making a point to go, because the meeting is one where Redwood Grove's future as a park is being shaped, one with a historic house that is deteriorating. 

"I ran across an article online saying they were considering whether to restore or demolish it, and I thought, 'Maybe they don't know about the history of the occupants,'" Buss said. 

Emma Wright Halsey purposefully planted the coastal redwood grove, Buss said, sapling by sapling, brought in by the truckload from her grandparent's original property in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Redwood Grove is the place where her mother, Eugenia Halsey Buss, and uncle, Theodore Vail Halsey Jr., grew up with so many happy memories. And it is the place where her mother took family members from time to time, after the city of Los Altos made it a public park.

After the city purchased the property and it was used for summer day camps, her mother periodically took Buss and other relatives to revisit the rooms where they lived and where Emma Halsey had tended her rhododendrons and water lilies. Her mother told story after story of the old days.

It was a memorial service for her Uncle Ted last January—the last living relative who had grown up in the house—that launched her on the search that brought her back to Redwood Grove, and the house's future. She thought about driving down to Los Altos, but with the distance from Berkeley, she decided to comfort her longing by Googling "Redwood Grove." She was rewarded by a lovely image—and some online newspaper articles that gave her a jolt.

"I hadn't even known it was boarded up," Buss said. "The last time I was there was sometime before my mother had passed in 2007."

Through her recent research, Buss become aware of the house's historical lineage—because of her family members—that tell a story about Santa Clara Valley and San Francisco's development.

Both her grandmother's maternal and paternal ancestors have roots going back to the early days surrounding California's founding, Buss said. One great-great-grandfather, John Alonzo Quinby, was mayor of San Jose. The branches of the family came to California in 1849, 1850 and 1869.

"My mother told me a story about my great-great-grandmother, Minerva Moody, who came from Wisconsin in a covered wagon, when they finally reached California in 1850," Buss said. Yes, Moody as in Moody Road. She was 15, and was promptly invited by the scion of a wealthy Spanish land grant family to a fandango. Later, she married Quinby.

Buss said she was relieved to find out that Thursday night's meeting is a starting point for discussion, not the beginning of a demolition discussion. "I think what they want to know is what the community really wants."

She hopes. Because it's not just her family's old homestead. Los Altans have made their own special memories there.

"I think that there's a lot of people who have emotional investment in that house, because of their children, who went there for summer day camps," Buss said.