Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph

Much of Dr. Horace Jones' Los Gatos medical career was spent upstairs in the La Cañada Building at the northwest corner of N. Santa Cruz and W. Main Street.

Picture from the Past

John S. Baggerly

Horace Jones was a popular physician of the old school

Dr. Horace Glynne Jones came to Los Gatos for six months to do a friend a favor and ended up staying a lifetime.

Jones arrived here in 1925 expecting to cover the practice of one Dr. Knowles, who was recovering from a heart attack. His reason for staying was great year-round weather and an entire valley in fruit blossoms, including world's largest fruit ranch--the Hume Ranch on Glen Una.

A copy of Doctor Jones' four-page, single-spaced account of his introduction to Los Gatos was loaned to this writer by Bob Tatum, a retired Los Gatos firefighter who knows something about Los Gatos weather. His career was spent at the Tait Avenue and Shannon Road firehouses from where he was known as Mr. Weatherman, phoning temperatures and rainfall figures into the Los Gatos Daily Times when that newspaper was published five days a week.

A cover note on Dr. Jones reads that when he came here he was 24 years old and had recently graduated from UC-Berkeley with a general surgery degree. He drove his Model-T Ford around the valley, seeing Knowles' patients, as well as driving back and forth to San Francisco to complete his residency in surgery.

He expected to return to San Francisco to establish his own practice when Knowles was able to resume his. But he fell in love with the Santa Clara Valley and the little town of Los Gatos and stayed for 59 years.

He retired from active practice at age 79 but was still seeing a few patients of long standing until a few months before his death in the early 1980s.

He was truly an old-fashioned family physician, making house calls, delivering babies, performing surgeries, tending broken bones, injuries and accidents and counseling patients and friends.

Jones writes: "Los Gatos had the same charm [in 1925] that it does today, only more so. I believe the population was about 1,500 within the city limits, which extended from Glenridge on the west to Loma Alta Avenue on the east. The northern boundary was Ashler Avenue. The southern boundary was Broadway."

Surrounding the limits were fruit ranches--mostly plums and apricots--with a few apple, pear, walnut or almond orchards interspersed. There were also many vineyards, but many had been allowed to deteriorate because of Prohibition. Some, however, prospered through the making of sacramental or medicinal wines.

Jones was much taken by the climate, clear air and active schedule of 10 trains a day passing through town, as well as the Peninsula Railway, a famous electric line of spacious red cars with a terminal in front of Hotel Lyndon at S. Santa Cruz Avenue and W. Main Street.

He was also impressed by many other town attributes: the many sanitariums for patients with respiratory ailments; the former Memorial Park and its community swimming pool; the summertime pageants; a strawberry farmer who doubled as a constable; and Dick Shore, who ran an ice-delivery company and also served as head of the volunteer fire department.

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