Photograph by George Sakkestad
SJSU Archaeology student Meredith King uses a screen to look for artifacts from a dig in back of Forbes Mill.
By Clarence Cromwell
When James Alexander Forbes broke ground for his four-story flour mill in 1850, he picked a spot next to Los Gatos Creek, where he could draw enough water to power a pair of 20-foot wheels.
As Forbes and those who followed him pulverized locally harvested grains by the wagon load, more people settled the area, and the place called Forbes Mill grew into the town of Los Gatos.
Now local historians want to know something about the people who worked in the big flour mill and laborers who built it.
About 14 archeology students broke ground at the mill last Saturday on an archaeological dig sponsored by San Jose State University and the Los Gatos Museum Association.
Only a small wing of the mill, once used to store sacks of flour, remains today. It houses a local history museum and stands just off Main Street.
Forbes went bankrupt and sold the mill in 1856 and a later owner bagged the last sack of flour in 1887. But the mill came back to life for a number of different businesses. Owners used it to house a woolen mill, a PG&E substation and a brewery. Most of the building was torn down in two stages, during 1915 and 1929.
Instructor Pat Dunning, also a member of the museum association's board, said her students will learn archeology field methods as they work on 12 successive Saturdays, ending Nov. 16.
An exploratory dig Feb. 10 uncovered part of the foundation about 60 feet from the walls of the museum. The dig revealed that so much dirt had been heaped over the foundation, that some of it might need to be removed with earthmoving equipment.
Students will do the important digging by hand, scooping away earth from just outside the foundation with small shovels that can uncover clues about the mill's builders. Dunning said she expects them to dig up a builders trench--a hole that would have allowed workers to lay the stones of the foundation--along the walls. The diggers are most likely to find historical junk there, things the builders discarded in the trench before filling it.
What's in the trench is the mill's biggest mystery, because it's unknown who laid the mill walls. Dunning said the workers might have been Native Americans or Latinos.
Anything found within the perimeter of the mill should tell something about the working lives of early Los Gatans, Dunning said.
Dunning expects small pieces of equipment, bottles and lunch pails dating to the past century.
"It would be great to find the millstone, but I don't think we'll find that," Dunning said. But any other junk on the property would be almost as important.
"It would be great to find a privy--which was used to throw a lot of things away," she mused.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, September 4, 1996.
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