Los Gatos Weekly-Times

The Main Street Bridge served many functions in the Los Gatos of the 1920s and '30s.

Photo courtesy of Los Gatan Scott Rose, host of the San Jose Postcard Club.

Picture from the Past

John S. Baggerly

The old Main Street Bridge offered shelter and safety

The Main Street Bridge carried the Interurban Street Car Line from 1903 to 1933, sheltered homeless men during the Great Depression and was guarded by men with wooden rifles immediately following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

During a great storm in the 1920s, water poured out of the Santa Cruz Mountains and down Los Gatos Creek and roared within a few feet of the tops of the bridge's arches.

The earth-filled bridge experienced some compaction caused by heavy auto traffic bound on weekends to Santa Cruz and hourly passage of the big red Interurban streetcars powered by overhead electric lines. Compaction caused a wavy effect, making the street slightly lower where soil was deepest.

The bridge's metal railing allowed children to peer in wonderment at the creek below. Multiple electric bulbs above the pillars assured safety. Prior to this stone-faced bridge, a series of wooden bridges were installed but were usually washed away by the first heavy storm.

During the Great Depression, the homeless--many who had come to town on freight trains--slept under the arches and filtered out into the community by day, looking for work. Addresses of "friendly" homes were chalked on the walls of the arches.

At times a group of the unemployed would go into neighborhoods and each ask for a specific soup item: an onion, a tomato, celery or potato. A soup bone from a local butcher shop would add flavor to hobo soup. Some homeless men seeking warmer climates remounted freight trains headed south.

The stock market crash of Oct. 24, 1929, propelled the United States into the Great Depression, while World War I veterans marched on Washington, D.C., pleading for a bonus. The future Gen. Douglas MacArthur, on horseback, was in charge of routing the veterans out of the nation's Capitol.

Herbert Hoover was president at the time, and "Hoovervilles" sprang up all over the nation as shelters for the homeless. Being a Republican town, Los Gatos did not wish to dishonor the president, so "Feathersville" was constructed not far from the railroad depot. The name honored Police Chief Lyman Feathers.

Prohibition was enacted in 1920, but the unemployed, just like more fortunate citizens, found ways to get booze. One homeless man bought a bottle of rubbing alcohol at a drugstore and was later seen asleep on the high school front lawn, an almost empty bottle at his side. Some women who employed the homeless paid in cash and extracted a promise that the money not be spent on "drink."

Slightly north of today's Main Street Bridge were the remains of the Forbes Flour Mill on the east bank and Los Gatos Elementary School (now Old Town Shopping Center) on the west bank.

Immediately south of the bridge was Memorial Park, which included the town swimming pool, permanent picnic tables, horseshoe pits and considerable parking.

Scott Rose's photograph is a pictorial record of E. Main Street in the 1920s. It also shows Crider's Department Store--originally Ford's Opera House and today the Opera House, whose downstairs houses antique and clothing stores and whose upstairs comprises banquet facilities.

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