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Postcard photo from Los Gatos Weekly-Times collection
A mountain man from a century ago takes a break to pose with the 'Father of the Forest' redwood tree in Big Basin State Park.
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The woodchoppers hacked their way into local history
By John S. Baggerly
Long before Los Gatos became a town in the 1890s, there were homesteaders, lumbermen and a group of single men called woodchoppers hacking out a living in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Emma Stolte Garrod, the daughter of a homesteader, tells their story in her book, One Life, Mine.
Settlers were multinational, hailing from such countries as France, Italy, Switzerland, Chile and Germany (in the case of her parents), and included one family that had broken from the Mormons and came here intending to raise racehorses.
Sometimes migration worked in reverse. Emma speaks of a handsome son of a French family coming to say good-bye, saying he was returning to France to take a bride.
Another Frenchman was so depressed that he took his life in a unique manner. Two photographs in the Los Gatos Library's reference department show how this man took his life by rigging a guillotine of two logs--one a chopping block and the other standing on end with a metal blade and pullcord attached.
Emma continues:
"At this time there was much wood being cut in the mountains, some to clear the land for planting, some just for the money that might be gained from its sale. This was called stumpage. The roots and small trees were left in place, trusting nature to grow another crop. It usually did in 10 or 15 years. This cutting was done either by landowners themselves or by men paid to do so--woodchoppers."
Woodchoppers were a class of older men, single, who had seen better days. Packing in water was their most difficult chore, so they invariably built their cabins near water. Emma surmised they used little of the water for anything but drinking.
Emma wrote: "Tan oaks grew mainly in the deepest canyons, and men would buy trees just for the bark, felling them in the spring when the sap was flowing freely, stripping off the bark in four-foot lengths, and leaving cords upon cords of good hardwood to go to waste. The bark was brought out of the canyons by donkey trains to some roadway where wagons could be loaded to haul it to tanneries in San Jose and Santa Clara."
Present-day old-timers recall the pleasant smell of tanneries on the valley floor. The late Mary Yocco Rugh recalled teamsters boarding at her family's home on Church Street, where the Methodist Church parking lot is located today. It was a two-day trip from the mountains to the tanneries.
Emma Stolte had firsthand experience with a woodchopper in the person of Peter O'Shaunessey. She describes "Crazy Pete" as a tall and well-built Irishman of amazing strength, with piercing black eyes, a high-bridged nose and coal black hair and beard--always too long and uncombed. He went unbathed, too, and his mind was full of vagaries and fancies.
He worked for the Stolte family, clearing and cutting cordwood, and had two imaginary associates, the Little One (who was good) and the Big One (who was bad). If a tree cut hard, it was because of the Big One. If it cut easily, it was because of the Little One. If Pete planted a garden and a cow ate his plants, it was all right "because the good Lord told her to."
When Pete had a few dollars, he would go to town and lose it at cards. Emma does not say where "town" was. It could have been in a saloon in what became Los Gatos or at one of the saloons in Alma or Lexington, located in what today is the bottom of Lexington Reservoir. Finally, Pete took a job some miles distant, telling the Stoltes that the Lord told him to move on.
Emma Stolte became the wife of Ralph Vince Garrod, prominent Saratoga orchardist. Today, her son, Vince S. Garrod, heads Garrod Farms in Saratoga.
John Baggerly is now semi-retired. This column is from the Los Gatos Weekly- Times archives.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
