The annex where James Alexander Forbes stored flour for his mill spent many years in disrepair before becoming a museum.

Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph

Best of Picture from the Past

Forbes Mill has survived many changes since 1854

By John S. Baggerly

Forbes Mill was about to disappear from the local scene when the forlorn photograph above was taken before its 1980 renovation. She--if buildings are feminine--made a chin-up comeback, as evidenced by the June 6 annual membership meeting hosted by the Los Gatos Museums' board of directors.

Today the building is officially "Forbes Mill Regional History Museum." The building was preserved for sainthood when former Los Gatos Councilwoman Mardi Gualiteri Bennet and Eureka Federal Savings branch manager Keith Lowry teamed up to restore the oldest structure in Los Gatos.

That alliance meant that the 127-year-old monolithic stone structure became the 10th in Eureka's chain of historical museums. Incidentally, just this month Eureka Bank became Bayview Bank. It still functions with its own parking lot on N. Santa Cruz Avenue.

Los Gatos historian Bill Wulf learned in recent years that when James Alexander Forbes planned his mill on Los Gatos Creek, he brought in stonemasons who had previously constructed flour mills in Saratoga.

Forbes, a former vice counsel to the British government in San Francisco, purchased 2,000 acres of the original Rancho Rinconada de Los Gatos from Jose Hernandez in 1853; by 1854 he had completed a four-story flour mill on Los Gatos Creek.

The first three stories were built of stone quarried from the walls of Cats Canyon. The top story was constructed of redwood cut from the Los Gatos foothills. The mill operation reached a peak of 100 barrels per day in 1981 and declined thereafter.

Wulf reports that Forbes went into heavy debt to build his mill, and by the time it was in production many mills had sprung up in Santa Clara Valley. The price of flour then plunged from $50 per barrel to $5 a barrel, Wulf recalls from his readings.

When the mill was still functioning, a railroad spur was built across Los Gatos Creek from the main line that ran north and south into town midway between University and Santa Cruz avenues.

After the mill was torn down, all that remained was the annex shown above. It was built as an afterthought to house sacks of flour. The south wall of the annex is the only remaining part of the original mill, which was torn down in 1939.

After the demise of the mill, the Los Gatos Ice and Power Company, a brewing and bottling company, utilized the structure. Later on, PG&E used it as a power substation. For a number of years the idle annex was fenced, but it still became an attractive hazard. The building is at the east side of a footbridge that once served Los Gatos Elementary School before that building became Old Town Shopping Center. Before the grammar school building was condemned for not being earthquake-proof, the school's athletic field was open space between the annex and what today is the Los Gatos High School.

In recent years local historical exhibits have been collected by curator Mary Foster, who retired recently because of illness. Currently, the Forbes Mill Museum is open from noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

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John Baggerly is now semi-retired. This column is from the Los Gatos Weekly-Times archives.

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