PATRONIZE KANSAN ADVERTISERS
Lilac Lane comes from bleak origin
By ERIC MORGENTHALER In the beginning, Mount Oread was a bleak ridge, a freak of nature rising treeless from the prairie.
It was a nice spot from which to view the surrounding countryside, but of itself was a treeless, destitute eyesore in the middle of the colorful Kansas countryside. Pioneers pushing west dubbed it the Hog's Back or the Devil's Backbone and used it as a landmark—an ugly ridge in the middle of a beautiful area.
As the Civil War drew to a close, a university was established on the windy hill. A few buildings were erected which broke the nakedness of the lonely ridge, but there were no trees; and Mount Oread was still the Devil's Backbone.
IN 1878, a Douglas County farmer, Joseph Savage, grew tired of the treeless hill and decided to change its complexion. He hauled a load of trees from the Wakarusa Valley and, with the help of Chancellor James Marvin and a squad of students, planted them on Mount Oread.
Savage then cut and rooted some scions from lilac bushes that were growing at his country home. He planted them in a row along the east side of the campus, in front of Fraser Hall. They bloomed in the spring and started a tradition that has become as deeply embedded in KU lore as old Fraser Hall itself.
Daily Kansan Monday, December 5, 1966
The blooming of the lilacs on what people came to call Lilac Lane became a campus rite for many. People from the area around Lawrence would make yearly pilgrimages to Mount Oread just to see the lavender lilacs blooming in the spring. According to a UDK article from 1940, "Spring doesn't come officially to the Hill until the lilacs bloom on the campus."
In 1936, the Lawrence City Council officially gave the name Lilac Lane to the street running between Fraser and Watkins Halls. The council's action made official a name that had stuck since the planting of the lilacs in 1878. Lilac Lane had grown from a dirt path to a dirt road to a paved street, but it had carried its name with it through every change.
THE LAWRENCE Journal- World in 1931 called Lilac Lane, "That little stretch of Mount Oread which probably lingers in the memory of more ex-Jayhawkers than any other bit of camp."
In the spring of this year, the lilacs on Lilae Lane were uprooted. Old Fraser had been razed and it became apparent that the lilacs, also, would have to go; a parking lot was built where they had stood.
Shortly afterwards, the University planted new lilac bushes to take the place of the old, but they will not bloom for seven years. So the tradition of Lilac Lane is now a thing of the past and a thing of the future; in the present, there are no lilacs on Lilac Lane.
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