Polly Phleger Goodan, 83; Enabled Protection of 1,200 Acres of Redwoods

Polly Phleger Goodan, who helped preserve 1,200 acres of redwoods when she oversaw the sale of her family’s estate on the San Francisco Peninsula to a conservation group with the goal of turning it over to the national park system, has died. She was 83.

Goodan died Thursday at Huntington Hospital after a fall at her home in Pasadena, said her son, Roger.

With the addition of the Phleger estate in 1995, the park was extended from the San Francisco watershed farther down the peninsula.

It also became part of a 400-mile trail system that spans ridgelines in the nine Bay Area counties.

“It was a very large piece of real estate and the largest addition to Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 20 years,” said Rich Weideman, a park spokesman.

Katherine Anderton, executive director of the Save the Redwoods League in San Francisco, said, “As longtime Californians, the family has a deep commitment to the redwoods. Her role as part of that legacy has been an identifying character.”

A small conservation group, the Peninsula Open Space Trust, had been working with Goodan’s mother when she died, leaving Goodan as the senior family member to complete the deal.

“Polly was very supportive of giving us the chance to protect the land,” Audrey Rust, president of the trust, wrote in an e-mail.

The land had been in the family since 1935, when San Francisco attorney Herman Phleger and his wife, Mary Elena, bought the isolated estate in Woodside, near Menlo Park.

As a teenager, Goodan rode her horse from the estate to Stanford University, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art history in 1944.

Born Mary Elena Phleger, the longtime philanthropist was always known as Polly.

After marrying financier William Goodan, a grandson of Harry Chandler, publisher of The Times from 1917 to 1944, she moved to Los Angeles and later Pasadena. Her husband died in 1990.

In addition to her son, of Samish Island, Wash., Goodan is survived by two daughters, Amanda of Pasadena and Mary Elena of Alameda, Calif.; and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. today at All Saints Episcopal Church, 132 N. Euclid Ave., Pasadena.

Instead of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Santa Cruz Island Foundation, 1010 Anacapa St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101; or to the Save the Redwoods League, 114 Sansome St., Room 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104.