Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by Camille Hatch Craddock

Nino Grimaldi (left) and Clyde Kirkendall used to shoot the rats they found prowling around the old Los Gatos sewer farm.

Picture from the Past

John S. Baggerly

Old-timers raised a stink over sanitation problems

The "Good Ol' Days" weren't all that good, and they didn't smell very nice, either. There were laws on the books to prove it. Town Fathers had caught wind of some bitter facts even before they incorporated the village of Los Gatos as a full-fledged town in 1887. Dead animals were their concern. It's not a charming memory, but a reminder that air and sight pollution are not a modern invention.

Today's photo shows Clyde A. Kirkendall, a druggist and town councilmember, and Nino Grimaldi, a silent tree-trimmer, with rats they shot at the town sewer farm, located at present-day Oak Meadow Park. A silent tree-trimmer, by the way, uses no power tools.

Amiel Aze Zanardi, a retired Green Valley Disposal Co. owner, recalls that the sewer farm consisted of two troughs, 5 feet deep and 4 feet wide, feeding into a large sewer pond. Runoff was guided into nearby vegetable gardens or into Los Gatos Creek for a trip to San Francisco Bay by way of Alviso. In the late 1940s, the town joined the county sewer district, and the sewer farm became history.

Back in 1887, the first Town Council, then called a Board of Trustees, faced the problem of domestic animals roaming free and stinking for days wherever they dropped dead. This fact of daily life prompted Ordinance No. 75, which forced the burial of animals at least four feet underground by the people upon whose property the animal was found.

Ordinance 75 also provided for the "arrest of owners of chickens, geese, ducks, pigs, hogs, sheep, goats, calves, cows and horses if found upon the public streets or on private property without consent of the owners or occupants."

In 1908, the trustees created another ordinance providing that livestock had to be kept in clean quarters. Manure was to be removed every two weeks between April 1 and Oct. 1 and at least every four weeks from Oct. 1 to April l.

Moreover, not more than two pigs per household were to be kept in the town limits, and these had to be more than 300 feet from a house. Hotels and restaurants were to have receptacles for slop and garbage and had to empty them at least every three weeks.

The clean-mindedness of the Los Gatos voter was reflected in a 1901 bond election. A $12,000 sewer bond passed, while voters defeated bonds for a $10,000 Town Hall, an electric light plant, a fire alarm system and a park for lesser amounts.

Unburied animals and slops were only part of the odoriferous problems. Lack of sanitation was a known cause of disease--the great plagues of Europe were traced to polluted rivers used as sewers; river water often found its way underground into public wells.

Early in Los Gatos' history, outdoor plumbing was a problem. Outhouses--known as "privies"--often had a half moon carved in the front door for ventilation. The late E.C. Baumgardner, a Los Gatos old-timer, recalled that the old University Avenue school had a privy that girls and boys took turns using. "Going to the moon" described mass privy use.

Even when indoor plumbing came into vogue, there were problems. Waste was flushed into backyard cesspools, or septic tanks, as they became known. Boards over the tanks rotted, and there were cases of residents crashing though into the mess. Current senior-grade old-timers recall litigation against neighbors, and sometimes the town, over sanitation issues.

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