The Los Gatos Library - Local History Volunteers are excited to share historical facts and information about the Town of Los Gatos. Many of these stories have originated through the work that they have been doing during their work in our Local History room at the library. Each issue will highlight interesting facts and stories about the people and events that have helped make Los Gatos such a wonderful place to live, work, and play. We hope you enjoy reading.
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Contact the Los Gatos Library 408-354-6896 Hours: Monday 11AM - 8PM Tuesday 11AM - 8PM Wednesday 10AM - 6PM Thursday 10AM - 6PM Friday 10AM - 6PM Saturday 10AM - 5PM Sunday 12PM - 5pm eMail the History Collection Volunteers history@losgatosca.gov
Local History Room 408-399-5795
Volunteer Hours: Mondays 1PM - 5PM Wednesdays 10 AM - 12PM Thursdays 1PM - 5PM
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Los Gatosby Peggy Conaway BergtoldA magical place to grow up and an exceptionally lovely place to live, Los Gatos has transformed from its agrarian roots to an upscale community at the southern tip of Silicon Valley. With its sublime Mediterranean climate and stunning natural setting, the town has progressed while still valiantly protecting its small town character and customs.
[979.473 Conaway]
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Koalas in the eucalyptus trees??? In downtown San Jose??? This was the reaction of Colleen Wilcox, then Chair of the Los Gatos Arts Commission, several years ago as she was walking down the median on San Carlos Street and happened to look up into the foliage. The sense of discovery and wonder made her think that this quixotic display of public art would be just the thing for Los Gatos. And what more appropriate object to choose than cats? Colleen related her experience to the Arts Commission and the group was enthusiastic from the start. A selection committee was formed, a web site for public artists was found, and a list of priorities for the critters was established. The sculptures should be light weight enough not to damage the trees, nor to seriously harm anyone should they fall. They should be in 3D form, and each different from the rest. The design should include a means of affixing them to the trees which would be flexible enough to allow for growth of the trees, they should be mounted high enough to discourage vandalism and they should be constructed of a material so that their life expectancy would be at least 10 years.
After a long and exacting bid process the artists, Solomon Bassoff and his wife Domenica Mottarell from Grass Valley, were selected because of their belief in the aims and goals of the Art Commission which were that the display should inspire the wonder of discovery, be whimsical, and that it should elicit a personal experience. Installation took place in 2014. The trees along Santa Cruz Ave. from Main Street to Bachman on both sides of the street were chosen for the first 10 cats to inhabit. There is not a cat in every tree, which makes it challenging to find one, and they are not all exactly the same color and they are not exactly in the same position. Sometimes they are hard to spot----you have to look carefully. The second phase of the installation is planned for cats in trees along Main Street.
After a year, a survey was taken and the results showed that many people didn’t know about the installation, some said the cats were too hard to see or too small or too high in the trees. Consideration is now being given to slightly larger and more colorful cats and there are several plaques to identify some treed cats.
But as word spreads, the Cat Walk has gained popularity. It has been used for the subjects for Treasure Hunts, grandparents make a game of it for visiting grandchildren, local merchants love it when a cat is in a tree in front of their establishment. If you walk along Santa Cruz Avenue and see someone or a group pointing up to the sky, you have come upon seekers of cats. One woman, upon seeing a group looking up, asked if anyone had called the Fire Department to rescue the cat. The cultural advantage of public art is to educate and inspire the community, to delight the senses and stretch the imagination. The Cat Walk in Los Gatos does just that.
Be sure to make your own discoveries along Santa Cruz Avenue next time you’re in downtown!
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The records of The Place Funeral Home, Charles S. Topping, West Valley Chapel, and Chapel of the Hills spanning the years 1901 to 1989 are now housed at the Los Gatos Library. For many years the 150 volumes were kept at the History Museum of Los Gatos at Forbes Mill and their existence was not widely known. In 2014 the History Museum of Los Gatos moved their history artifacts to their new location at the former Los Gatos Library. Shortly before the move it was determined that the funeral records would be more accessible to the public at the new Los Gatos Library. The Library staff welcomed the addition to the History Project collection. The 150 volumes can now be found on the second floor next to the History Project work room in cabinets 1, 2,and 3. Generally, the funeral records from each of the funeral homes are contained in a large, formal funeral record book. Each record is one page divided in half. On one half is the personal information of the deceased, and on the remaining half, funeral expenses are listed. On some pages, a copy of an obituary published in a local paper is pasted. The exception to the formal records of most funeral homes in Los Gatos are those of the Place Funeral Home. The Place Funeral Home was located at 116 North Santa Cruz Avenue. (now Palacio Restaurant) The records from The Place Funeral Home include 95 volumes of the deceased’s information and 2 volumes of indexes from 1911 to 1965. The information contained in the 95 volumes varies. In the early years most included a Standard Certificate of Death and correspondence from family or legal advisors. As the years went on, the amount of information increased to include the funeral program, a list of the pall bearers, names of people who sent floral tributes, funeral expenses (usually hand written on a piece of paper), correspondence regarding the deceased, and if available, newspaper articles about the person during his life time and finally a copies of newspaper obituaries. The information in the Place Funeral Home Records is a gold mine for those who are lucky enough to be researching someone contained in them. For example, imagine a descendent of Mr. Frank Everett Briggs reading through the information contained in his death record in the 1938 volume . He/She would discover Mr. Briggs came to California as a young child and lived in a number of different California towns with his parents. He came to Los Gatos as an adult to begin a lifetime in the grocery business. He owned several grocery stores in partnership. In reading a newspaper article about Mr. Briggs, we discover he died unexpectedly in the kitchen of his house which was located behind the grocery store he owned at 131 North Santa Cruz Ave. He was a widower with 4 grown children. He was a fisherman as he had an angling license in his pocket and he was in business with his son as there was a Briggs and Son sales slip in his pocket. The list of names of people who sent floral tributes is 4 pages long, and a great number of them were from local business people. A newspaper article about the death of Mr. Briggs shared that all the stores in town were closed during his funeral. One of his former partners in business was a pall bearer. A follow up article included on the last page of information noted that the grocery store was sold shortly after Mr. Briggs’ death. I continue to be amazed at the time and effort that was put into these records. It was a labor of love for the person who compiled each person’s record. It is a view not only of the person, but a peek at life in Los Gatos. To make the records available to everyone, the History Project has begun a project of scanning the first page of each record containing the name of the deceased and the cause and date of his/her death. This information will eventually be posted on the Library’s “ History Los Gatos” web site. Please call the library if you are interested in doing some genealogical research. To view the complete record one will have to come to the library and request access from the reference librarian or one of the history volunteers if you visit while they are working.
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The area of the summit where highway 17 crosses today was known in the late 1700s as Cuesta de Los Gatos or Wild Cat Ridge, the forbearer of our town name. Other historic references to this name can be found, including the story of Yoscolo, the "bandit Indian". The mission days of California were not easy for the mission Indians. Taken away from their hunter-gatherer lifestyle and forced to work the land for the church, some adapted but others became outright defiant, terrorizing their "protectors". One such prominent Indian, Yoscolo, who was educated at Mission Santa Clara, had tactful control of the other Indians and thus became the chief of Indians at age 21. However, when they misbehaved, the padres held Yoscolo guilty, which provoked his anger and alienation. A well documented story that took place in 1831 depicts Yoscolo and approximately 500 other Indians hidden by the veil of night, looting the stores, snatching two hundred Indian girls, about two thousand horses, and heading to Mariposa unopposed. They joined about 40,000 other tribes-people camping on the Stanislaus River fishing and enjoying themselves. General Vallejo's men who had taken pursuit eventually gave up and went home. Sometime later, Yoscolo and two hundred men returned to the mission. Again, under the cover of night, they looted the stores and escaped this time to "La Cuesta de Los Gatos". The name had been given to the area because of the great numbers of wild cats which were there in former times. Yoscolo was not so lucky this time. Juan Prado Mesa armed with 100 men and an artillery of muskets, carbines and flint-lock pistols engaged the Indians with their bow and arrows in an all day fight that came to be known as "The Battle of Los Gatos". Wounded Yoscolo was captured and beheaded, his head prominently displayed in front of the church at Mission Santa Clara as a warning to all. 15 years later, in the Spring of 1846, Captain John Charles Fremont writes about Cuesta de Los Gatos in his military scouting expedition memoirs, no doubt referring to a name he read from a map. Speaking about the area that would one day become Los Gatos he writes, "The valley is openly wooded with groves of oak, free from underbrush, and after the spring rains covered with grass. On the west it is protected from the chilling influence of the northwest winds by the Cuesta de los Gatos (wild-cat ridge), which separates it from the coast." Tune in next time for Part III... California outlaws recreational and commercial bobcat trapping. November 2015 Resources and Further Reading: "Memoirs of My Life" by John Charles Fremont. Vol. 1, 1887 Sixty Years in California, Davis, 1889 Spanish and Indian Place Names of California, Sanchez, 1914 Please send comments to sungold27@gmail.com
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The Almond Grove is the downtown historic district of Los Gatos. It is bordered by Bean Avenue, Glenridge Avenue, Victory Lane, and Saratoga-Los Gatos Road (Highway 9). It contains many of the town’s most beautiful Victorian, Edwardian, and Craftsman homes. The Almond Grove addition was the first and largest subdivision (1887) after the incorporation of the Town of Los Gatos. Of approximately 40 acres, the historic tract was the last land, formerly an almond orchard as its name suggests, of 162½ acres bought in 1865 by John Mason from Edward Auzerais, an important landowner in Santa Clara County after whom Auzerais Street in San Jose and Auzerais Court in Los Gatos was named. The purchasers and developers of Almond Grove were four very important figures of Los Gatos history and honored by street names still used in the area. They were Alphonse Eli Wilder, banker; Augustine Nicholson, capitalist; Magnus Tait, farmer and miner; and John Bean, orchardist.
In September of 1887, an orchardist named Harvey Wilcox had a land auction of the subdivision. He sold 121 out of 170 lots for sale - all in one day!! Harvey Wilcox was born in Onondaga County, New York, March 30, 1822. He was married to Hannah Paddock April 14, 1812. She was born in New York April 29, 1786. He settled in Los Gatos in 1881, and bought and improved forty acres of land which was purchased from him by the Santa Clara College of Jesuits as a branch of their college. Mr. Wilcox built the “Wilcox House” in Los Gatos in 1887, which he owns. It had thirty-five rooms, and was situated near the depot. He passed away on 10 May 1890 in Los Gatos. Many of the original Almond Grove homes still exist and are protected by historic guidelines which prevent them from being altered. Of the original homes, 78 of the pre-1895 homes, 22 homes built between 1895 and 1908, 31 homes built between 1908 and 1916, and 30 homes built between 1917 and 1930 still exist. Today, the Almond Grove is a beautiful neighborhood of restored homes. It is well known for its decorations and crowds of children, approximately 5,000!, that gather on Halloween in October, the Cat’s Hill Bicycle Race in May, and the staging area for the Los Gatos Christmas Parade the first weekend in December. One delightful surprise to people strolling through the Almond Grove is on Tait Avenue. The Almendra (Almond) Creek runs from the Santa Cruz Mountains into Los Gatos and runs under Tait Avenue between Almendra Avenue and Bachman Avenue. It then goes subterranean through a tunnel under downtown Los Gatos to the Los Gatos Creek which in turn runs into Vasona Reservoir. Below are some interesting facts about the founders and other important residents, all of which have Almond Grove streets named after them. A beautiful, historic, Almond Grove Victorian home. The Almond Grove Founders Magnus Tait (Farmer and Miner) Arrived in Los Gatos in 1887 Mr. Tait was born May 30, 1837 in the Shetland Islands, Scotland. On August 4, 1862, he enlisted in Company M, First Illinois Light Artillery, and his company was attached to the Fourth Army Corps most of the time while in service. He died in September 19, 1906. Buried at Los Gatos Memorial Park. He built “Rose Cottage” at 231 Tait Avenue, Los Gatos. (his home still exists). He was married May 26, 1858, to Antoinette Cooley, a native of Amber, Onondaga County, New York, who was born December 7, 1837. John Bean (Orchardist) Mr. Bean was born January 2, 1821 in Mountville, Maine. He died March 19, 1909 in Los Gatos, California and is buried in the Masonic section of Los Gatos Memorial Park. He came to Los Gatos in 1883 and was married to Emeline M. Edgecomb (born September 23, 1829 in Montville, Maine) on April 3, 1848. He was the inventor of the Bean Spray Pump. The Bean Spray Pump Company later became Food Machinery Company (FMC). Mr. Bean owned ten acres of almond orchard in Los Gatos. His home was on the corner of Santa Cruz and Bean Avenues at 212 Bean Avenue. (the home no longer exists.) Augustine Nicholson (Banker and Capitalist) Augustine was born in Harrison, Ohio on February 21, 1830. He purchased land in Los Gatos on March 3, 1885. Mr. Nicholson was married to Margaret Miller on April 9, 1879. His home was located on Nicholson Avenue. (His home no longer exists.) He died September 1916. Alphonse Eli Wilder Mr. Wilder was the Justice of the Peace in Los Gatos in 1886. He was born September 13, 1815 in Genesee County, New York. Mr. Wilder purchased 10 acres in 1883. His home was located at 244 East Main Street (His home no longer exists.) Mr. Wilder died March 8, 1914. He is buried at Los Gatos Memorial Park. Other Important Almond Grove residents Benjamin Franklin Bachman Mr. Bachman was born April 25, 1782 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His home at 208 Bachman was built in 1896. It is now the upper portion of C.B. Hannegan’s Irish Pub. Mr. Bachman died February 12, 1895 in Los Gatos, California. He is buried at Los Gatos Memorial Park. In 1880 he moved to Santa Clara County and purchased fifty acres of land in and adjoining Los Gatos, California. His almond orchard contained 700 almond trees. Fenilen Massol Los Gatos Mayor 1894 to 1897. His home was located at 328 Bachman Avenue. (the home still exists.) Mr. Massol owned 22 acres of the Almond Grove.
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Dora Mae Rankin (April 20, 1887- February 14, 1979) Undoubtedly, there are some local residents who could tell us first-hand what it was like to sit in on one of Dora Mae Rankin's elementary school classrooms, for this is where the well-loved teacher taught, inspired and encouraged hundreds of students during 30 years of her life. In 1947 she retired from teaching in the Los Gatos School District. That's not so long ago, yet beautiful silver and crystal serving pieces from the Rankin family, currently on exhibit at our NUMU, remind us that it was long before Gift Registries at Crate & Barrel or Ikea. Dora and her two sisters contributed so many items that only a small number can be displayed at one time. We can only imagine whether the family brought these treasures with them ". . . as we came up on the old narrow gauge train" in 1900, or whether the girls' mother, soon to be widowed, acquired them later. In a memoir, Dora wrote, "I had my pet chicken in a paper bag with only her head poking out and my big black cat with a heavy red cord for a leash. I can't recall any difficulty with either one but I do remember the conductor sitting with me and laughing a great deal. I thought he was a very jolly fellow." The Rankins came to Los Gatos because The Reverend William B. Rankin, father of Margaret, Henrianne and Dora, had been President of the Pacific Methodist College in Santa Rosa and had just been appointed Presiding Elder in the San Francisco District, (first Methodist Bishop for the state of California), requiring the move. However, soon afterwards he contracted typhoid pneumonia and died after only three days of illness. Mrs. Rankin saw to it that her daughters received higher educations, and Dora, after graduating as Valedictorian from Los Gatos High School in 1906, went on to receive her teaching degree from San Jose Normal School, now San Jose State University. Miss Rankin taught in the neighboring school districts of Oakland and Morgan Hill as well as in Los Gatos during her career, but always considered this town her home. When she worked in Oakland she lived in a hotel and drove home to the family residence every Friday evening. She'd leave town on Sunday evening or even Monday morning "if the fog wasn't bad, with a suitcase full of clean clothes to last the week." Besides her love of teaching, Dora's creativity came out in gardening, designing and making things like a playhouse in her backyard when she was a child. Later, she hooked rugs and made intricate needlepoint fire screens. She even drew up the plans for the extensive remodeling of their Peralta Avenue home in the late 1920s, but probably her most ambitious accomplishment was the writing of a popular weekly column for the Los Gatos Times Observer entitled "As It Was," remembrances of Los Gatos homes and their occupants, and what everyday life was like for earlier inhabitants. Long after her retirement, school children continued to honor her because of their teachers' fond memories. The senior class of Los Gatos High School dedicated their yearbook to her in 1978. The kindergartners of Daves Avenue School invited her to be their Guest of Honor at their Christmas Party where they decorated a tree for her. After that, Miss Rankin invited the whole class to see an exhibit she had at the Los Gatos Museum, then invited them to her home for a Valentine cookie as a "thank you." pen and ink rendering of Dora Rankin by Jeanette Rapp 2015 Often times the favorite teachers in our lives are remembered not so much for the lessons they taught, but for their unique character. Dora Mae Rankin is right up there as one of the Los Gatos Schools' most memorable. She died at the age of 92, still single, living in her stucco, one-story Peralta Avenue home, fairly disabled by arthritis and near blindness, but surrounded by friends and caregivers who loved her.
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Ohlone wayLong, long ago, perhaps twenty or thirty thousand years ago, the first humans wandered into our state. Those who came to the central part of what would become California gradually settled into hundreds of isolated tribelets. Much later, the Spanish called the first Central Californians "costenos," people of the coast. American settlers anglicized it to Costanoan . Two centuries later descendants of Bay Area Native Americans looking for a Native American word called them Ohlone, perhaps after "the name of a prominent village along the San Mateo coast, or perhaps it was a Miwok word meaning 'western people'." (Margolin, p. 1) The tribelet that wandered into the South San Francisco Bay, to what would become known as the Santa Clara Valley and the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, called THEMSELVES the Tamyen . Tamyen was their phrase for "the people." One settlement was along Los Gatos Creek, an area once covered by oaks and redwoods. Locally we still use one Tamyen word, meaning "hummingbird," one of their gods, when we say "Mount Umunhum". Apparently, the word is an example of the great old poetic technique of onomatopoeia, a formidable and somewhat hilarious word meaning, "a word which imitates a sound." "Umunhum" is likely an attempt to imitate the humming, whirring, miniature helicopter sound of a hummingbird's wings in incredibly fast motion. The Tamyen were hunter-gatherers in a benign climate and an area incredibly rich in water, wild game, nuts, and berries. One of their staples was acorn mush. The acorns were harvested by the whole village. Each day a woman removed several handfuls of acorns from her storage baskets. She hulled them one at a time by placing them on an anvil stone, hitting them with a hammer stone, and peeling off the shells. Then she put the kernels into a stone motor or sometimes a mortar basket (a bottomless basket glued to a rock). Sitting with the other women of the village,she pounded the acorns with a long pestle,pausing now and then to scrape the acorn flour away from the sides of the mortar with a soaproot fiber brush. Then she pounded some more. The rhythmic thumping of the women's pestles filled the air. For the Ohlones this was the sound of their village, the sound of “home”... (Margolin, p.43} The flour was leached repeatedly with water from Los Gatos Creek, cooked, and made into porridge or bread. This food source gave the Ohlones a filling, nutritious back up food even when berries or other nuts were out of season or the hunting was unsuccessful. Ohlone society was closely-knit. They emphasized marriage and sharing as ways of life. They were tolerant (as of homosexuality), and were usually in a state of peace, or at least of truce, rather than in a state of war with their neighbors. The Ohlone's balanced, communal world was changed forever by the arrival of the Spanish; a group of men who would thrust the Tamyen and all their Ohlone cousins into the European 18th century, and push them to the lowest class in society . In Los Gatos, the arrival was that of the De Anza Expedition, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Don Juan Bautista De Anza, who trailed into what we now call the southwest Santa Clara Valley on March 25, 1776. They were an exploratory force on its way from the Carmel Mission to Mission San Francisco de Assiz. The Spanish were the military force which, along with encouragement and gifts from the Franciscan friars who accompanied De Anza, drove the Tamyen behind mission walls, mostly the walls of Missions Santa Cruz, San Jose and Santa Clara de Assiz (which was built in part of redwoods from Los Gatos, probably cut from low-lying hills near the creek). Aiming to build a Roman Catholic utopia in the wilderness, the fathers made the Ohlone wear cloth they had to learn to weave, give up their own religion, live with the men and women in separate barracks, and with great labor, plow, plant, weed and harvest the earth for food while nuts, buries, and heaps of acorns rotted all around them, like the spirit of the Tamyen themselves. The Tamyen, like so many tribes of Native Americans ,were decimated by diseases brought to the South Bay by white soldiers, traders and settlers. Those who survived were further disoriented and dispersed when Mexico won its independence from Spain and ordered all mission lands ceded to the Mexican government. Many Ohlone clustered in small villages, but these never achieved reservation status and were soon overrun by Anglo development. There are still part Ohlone people living in Santa Clara County. Some have powows and continue to try to keep their Native American heritage alive. In Los Gatos Creek, and in our remaining redwoods and oaks, faint Ohlone echoes can still be heard if we listen. Sources : Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way; William Wulf History of Los Gatos and the Santa Cruz Mountains; Kathryn Morgan, Los Gatos Centennial Pageant
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The New Museums of Los Gatos 106 E. Main Street Los Gatos, CA 95030 Collections at NUMU Sara Gray Registrar/Collections Manager 2015 saw the reorganization of NUMU’s wonderful historic collections. This project included completing a full inventory and collections move from the former Museum location at Forbes Mill. Moving into 2016, NUMU will see some very exciting things happening with its collections with a completion of our inventory and rehousing project and an expansion of our Cabinet of Curiosities, our collections focused gallery. During our inventory process we have uncovered a variety of wonderful objects important to Los Gatos and its residents. We have found a large collection of objects once belonging to Dora Rankin, taxidermy birds, clothing, various tools, and numerous hand made doilies and table linens. Additionally, we are discovering a lot of stories surrounding our objects, which strengthens their importance to save and preserve. NUMU invites the community to participate by submitting suggestions for exhibits or topics we should explore or by donating objects that are important to Los Gatos.
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Lyn Dougherty Local History Volunteer
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Betty Chase Local History Volunteer
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Trish Smalling Goldfarb Local History Volunteer
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Kathy Morgan Local History Volunteer
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Richard Katz Local History Volunteer
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Jeanette Rapp Local History Volunteer
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Melissa Maglio Librarian Local History Volunteer Coordinator
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