Los Gatos Weekly-Times Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph The town of Los Gatos was once full of hitching posts. Gwen Watkins and her dog Tally used one of the last remaining posts into the early 1980s. Picture from the Past John S. Baggerly Hitching posts, wooden curbs join other relics of town's past Hitching posts and wooden street curbs have disappeared from the Los Gatos scene, not to mention eight major downtown structures. In today's photograph, Gwen Watkins and her Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Tally, use one of the town's former posts in front of her longtime home at 23 Tait Avenue. Readers may recall from our Jan. 6 column that Watkins lives in the residence originally built and occupied by Magnus Tait, a Civil War veteran. Tait was one of the town's few early arrivals who had money in his pocket. It came at a price, though, after internment in the Confederacy Civil War prison at Andersonville, Ga. Another hitching post was at 247 Los Gatos Blvd., formerly San Jose Avenue. This was the home of the late Cecil Hooten, a longtime sheriff's deputy. His post was four-sided and tapered upward, with the traditional ring at the top. Early photographs of downtown Los Gatos, including Main Street and Santa Cruz Avenue, show regularly spaced posts for saddle horses as well as working horses, the latter pulling various two- and four-wheel vehicles of the day. Remnants of wooden street curbs survived until mid-century. One was on W. Main Street where it curves southward into upper Broadway. Still in use today are wooden curbs in the west hills of town: Belmont Avenue, Elmwood, Bachman and Alexander avenues. Today, most of these curbs serve as the outside wall of flower planters. Two middle-of-the-street oak trees are also long gone. One stood in the middle of Belmont Avenue, a few feet from where it melds with lower Pennsylvania Avenue. A motorist turning left from lower Pennsylvania onto Belmont smacked into the tree. That was the end of the oak and almost the driver. The other big oak stood at the south end of Elmwood Avenue near Kennedy Road. The tree was so located that traffic turned to the right or the left of it, depending on which direction they wished to travel. With the oak gone, the end of Elmwood became wide, with traffic flowing visibly onto Kennedy. Eight major downtown structures also disappeared by mid-century: Carnegie Library on University Avenue, 1954; Main Street Bridge and Memorial Park, 1955; the Baptist Church at Main Street and College Avenue, 1958; a portion of railroad tracks, 1959; Hotel Lyndon at W. Main Street and N. Santa Cruz Avenue, 1963; the railroad depot, 1964; the old Town Hall, 1966; and the old Methodist Church, 1968. The parking lot of St. Luke's Episcopal Church occupies the Carnegie Library site. The three-arch, stone-faced Main Street Bridge was removed to make way for today's Highway 17 overpass. The Baptist Church became the First Baptist Community Church and relocated to Daves Avenue. No financial savior maintained Lyndon Hotel. The railroad depot was demolished; today the U.S. Post Office is in that vicinity. The old Town Hall structure became the Civic Center, which includes the Town Council Chambers as well as the Planning Department, Police Department and library. The original Methodist Church was torn down and rebuilt at Church Street and High School Court. [ Back to Contents Page | Los Gatos Weekly-Times Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, February 10, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.