Photograph courtesy of Florence C. Cunningham's 'Saratoga's First Hundred Years.'

The picnic area, campgrounds, store and oil pump at Saratoga's Long Bridge area were popular with travelers crossing the mountains.

Picture from the Past

Last-chance gas pumps also offered mountain recreation

By John S. Baggerly

What eventually became the city of Saratoga was well on its way to being called Lumbertown when a liquid began bubbling from the ground. Testing showed it to be the same type of spring water bubbling in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Lumbertown was a possible name because what became Big Basin Way was a wide thoroughfare, both sides of which were stacked with various cuts of lumber, much of it from the mill of Neil Carmichael. He must have been a lumbering man himself, judging from his son Tom, the largest football player at Los Gatos High School in the early 1930s. Carmichael, like Los Gatan John Lyndon, knew the value of trees when turned into shelter and firewood.

Back in the 1890s, Long Bridge, a popular recreational picnic and camping grounds, appeared at 22801 Big Basin Way, west of Saratoga and en route to Summit Road. When today's Picture of the Past was taken in the early 1900s, Henry Ford had invented and was selling his $500 automobile. Thus, Standard Oil Products are advertised over the front porch shade roof.

Visible at the far left is a self-service gasoline pump. Locals used the pump as did travelers mounting the hills above or descending from their homes. Directly behind the building was a picnic area and a dance area on hard ground among the trees. A photo of this outdoors dance is shown in Florence R. Cunningham's 348-page hardcover book, Saratoga's First Hundred Years. Today, homes exist aplenty in this area.

In the early times "Last Chance saloons" dotted the nation just as Long Bridge offered a last chance to fill up on gasoline and oil. Similarly Los Gatos had a last-chance gasoline stop at Gateway Garage, the present location of Ace Rural Supply Hardware at 110 S. Santa Cruz Ave. On Saturdays and Sundays, Gateway Garage management rolled out a multigallon gasoline tank to curbside for the convenience of passing motorists. When Holy City was built in the Santa Cruz Mountains near the summit, "Father" Riker saw the profit in gasoline and supplied pumps.

Dancing and playacting would later become part of the social life of Saratoga, not just as a novelty in the mountains. Dances for all ages were once held at the Saratoga Foothill Club. Behind Dorothea Johnston's Saratoga Inn was her outdoor Theatre of the Glade, where Shakespeare and modern plays were performed. Future Academy Award-winning actress Olivia de Havilland once played Puck there in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Saratoga theater brightened when John and Kay Breeden moved to town and produced popular plays at the former Saratoga Grammar School Auditorium. They previously had done much summer stock in New England. An attraction of performing in a Breeden play was the party at their beautiful home after the final performance.

Police Report

Walls separate neighbors and cultures

Obituaries

Picture From the Past

Sports Briefs

Local athletes perform well at CCS Top 8 Track Classic

Los Gatos Little League results

Six high school athletes win Wedemeyer scholarships