Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph

The town's first newspaper, the Los Gatos Weekly News, established in 1881, at one time was published from this building, located at 128 E. Main St. The building stood empty for a number of years and was torn down in 1953.

Picture from the Past

John S. Baggerly

Newspapers enjoy long, lively tradition in town

Newspapers were a rough-and-tumble poker game back in 1881, when A.J. Walker founded The Los Gatos Weekly News and promptly encouraged Los Gatos into townhood six years later.

It was only three years after Walker, a Civil War veteran and a "Radical Republican," started to publish that the Democrats of Los Gatos were displeased with his partisanship. Thus The Los Gatos Mail was founded in 1904 by H.H. Main, a county supervisor, newspaperman and leading county Democrat.

That was the beginning of a newspaper poker game in which sat a variety of founders who not only came and went but actually changed chairs.

Walker, who had owned newspapers before coming here, sold out in 1885 and retired to Santa Cruz. More publishers came and went at both the News and Mail.

When Walker returned to Los Gatos in 1892, the game was still going strong. He bought back in, purchasing The Mail from his former rival, and sat down to play. In the meantime, W.H.B. Trantham, a former Missouri publisher who came to Los Gatos for his health, sat across from Walker as boss of The News. He had been a compositor under Walker.

By now the small-time players, The Enterprise, Daily Chronicle and The Los Gatan, had lost their chips and disappeared into the night.

It is said that old-time editors did not write their copy on paper but composed as their nimble fingers picked fonts from the type case. This was long before linotyopes and present-day computers.

Whatever the method of composing by Walker and Trantham, their words came out sharply pointed. The editors battled each other in a price war over circulation, over a matter of alleged drunkenness, on the wet/dry issue and in a flap over some noisy drumbeating.

Trantham's News said it would cut its subscription rate from $1.50 a year to 75 cents, half of what The Mail cost, as long as "that superannuated relic of typography continues his practice of warfare when he gives away his alms-soliciting publication, we expect to go him one better by throwing in a chromo [a type of lithograph]."

Things got even more personal. The News said that Walker dropped the American Press Association service because the APA reported the Los Gatos editor "got gloriously drunk because a school bond election didn't go his way."

In a follow-up punch, The News said: "A man of sound sense would hesitate a long time before proclaiming such a 'non compos mentis' sheet as The Mail superior to all others."

On the wet-dry issue, The Mail proclaimed: "This is a model temperance town, there being only three places where liquors are sold, two hotels and one saloon."

Again Walker left the game, selling out and retiring to Santa Cruz but continuing to sit in as a contributor to The Mail.

He clashed with The News over the banning of drums and other loud noises on the streets of Los Gatos. Walker contended that the proposed law discriminated against the Salvation Army. "I regard the ordinance in question as un-Christian, un-charitable and un-American," he wrote. The News took issue with Walker, accusing him of harassing the town trustees.

Eventually the two newspapers merged to become The Los Gatos Mail-News, which in time became the Los Gatos Times and later the Los Gatos Times-Observer.

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