Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph

Los Gatos' early residents kept their hard-earned savings in the town's first bank, the aptly named Bank of Los Gatos.

Picture from the Past

John S. Baggerly

Bank of Los Gatos kept a young town's money safe

What were the economics in "The Little Corner of the Cats" that necessitated a bank in 1883?

That bank, which was incorporated Nov. 5, 1883, was built on the south side of E. Main Street about halfway between Seanor Street (now Pageant Way) and Wilcox Avenue (now College Avenue).

It was the railroaders--those Bonanza Kings who laid the rails up to the timber in the hills and mountain-grown fruit--who changed this fold in the hills from a whiskey stop for lumbermen and Alexander Forbes' struggling flour mill into a town with promise.

The Bonanza people didn't give a toot for the Ten Mile House and its saloon or for Forbes' mill--doomed because the power wheel was built too high for the small and inconsistent water flow from Los Gatos Creek.

The men of vision who saw a future for a town here were building types like John W. Lyndon, Herman Sund, D.D. Holland, George Seanor and Palmer Perkins--early town trustees who earned their livings with their hands.

From the start, friendly weather, tender soil, consistent rainfall and flowing water were quickly noted by early settlers. There were times even in the present century that steelhead salmon wiggled their way from San Francisco Bay up Los Gatos Creek to our downtown area, where some found their way into local breakfast skillets.

Farmers who preferred the high ground of Los Gatos were Booker, Panighetti, Lindsay, Gagliasso, Tobacco, Rouse and Miller. Lowland farmers were Parr, Downing, Hume, Shaner, Battee, Cilker, Howes, Murphy, Mirassou, Lester, Hicks and many others.

If some of the above names sound like streets, you're right.

Early in this century, our town received worldwide press. The London Lancet, Britain's prestigious medical journal, wrote: "The two most equitable climates in the world are at a little town in California south of San Francisco--Los Gatos--and Aswan, Egypt." This plug had doctors nationwide sending their respiratory patients to Los Gatos, and sanitariums came into being.

With everyone in love with our weather, Los Gatans began thinking about the need for a booster group such as a chamber of commerce. First to talk like that were editors W.S. Walker and W.H.B. Trantham of the News and Mail, respectively. They sang the need first for town incorporation and then for a booster group.

In March 1887, five months before Los Gatos became a town, some men met to discuss the possibility of a board of trade. Walker, setting his own type by hand, wrote, "We need a Board of Trade so that our section may be properly represented in the tidal wave of prosperity that is sweeping the state."

A narrow-gauge railroad came and was then replaced by a standard-gauge railroad with a link to Santa Cruz. The busy interurban railroad came in 1903, and by mid-century all were gone.

Then came the automobile age, with gas stations on many downtown corners. They, like downtown auto agencies, left downtown for more elbow room in the outskirts.

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