Saratoga Stereopticon

Blossom Festival leads century's key events

By Willys Peck

Regardless of hair-splitting over the actual timing of the new Millennium, I find myself caught up in the popular pastime of selecting the 10 most this-or-that of the recent century. Unlike my send-up of the forces of progress in the last Stereopticon column, these are my serious nominations for the 10 most significant Saratoga events of the past 100 years, garnered from Florence Cunningham's Saratoga's First Hundred Years and some personal recollections and research.

1900: The first Saratoga Blossom Festival. This was the "thanksgiving jollification" inspired by the Rev. Edwin Sidney "Everlasting Sunshine" Williams on March 29. What started as a homespun celebration, centered on the blossoming orchards after a period of dry years, grew into a major entertainment spectacle that drew thousands of visitors each spring. The last full-scale Blossom Festival was in 1941, in Festival Glen, a natural amphitheater on Saratoga Avenue on a site now occupied by two condominiums.

1904: Arrival of the first car of the San Jose-Los Gatos Interurban Railway Co., later the Peninsular Railway, on March 16. With this service, one could travel from Saratoga to San Jose in something like 20 minutes, if there weren't too many riders flagging down the car along the way. For, although this was an interurban line connecting cities and towns, it did offer city streetcar-type service, where one could board a car at almost any point. The "Campbell short line" was opened in 1905, completing a loop through the central Santa Clara Valley, and a line to Mayfield, or South Palo Alto, was opened in 1914. The central valley loop was shut down in 1933, and service was taken over by Peerless Stages Inc. buses.

1907: Founding of the Foothill Study Club, which became the Saratoga Foothill Club. This organization, aside from providing a social and intellectual outlet for women of the Saratoga area, has remained a potent influence in the community throughout its existence. Not the least of these influences is the Foothill Clubhouse itself. Designed by famed architect Julia Morgan and built in 1915, it might well qualify as Saratoga's signature building, when one considers the variety of events held there over the years, down to and including the current public lecture series.

1912: Sen. James D. Phelan builds Villa Montalvo. Heir to a San Francisco real estate fortune, reform mayor of that city, one-term U.S. senator and lifelong patron of the arts, Phelan died in 1930. It was his wish, spelled out in his will, that Montalvo be maintained as a center for the arts.

When the San Francisco Art Association, to whom the estate had been left, and Phelan's collateral heirs brought suit to break the trust as being impossible of fulfillment, given the available funds, a judge decreed in 1951 that the property should be turned over to the Montalvo Association. It was a landmark local effort that brought about this result, and Phelan's intentions have been carried out since that time.

1919: Creation of Saratoga's first official park. This resulted from removal of the Peninsular Railway station from what is now the center of the main Village intersection to a site now occupied by the Village Post Office. The move was at the insistence of local citizens who considered the tracks, wires and occasional boxcars shunted onto a siding to be inappropriate adornments for the center of town.

A local stock company was formed for the purpose of buying the property from the railroad. The company was later dissolved, after the non-park portion was sold for a business block and, in the absence of a municipality to take over, title to the park was turned over to the Foothill Club. Chief feature of the park, actually a plaza, was the Memorial Arch, dedicated to the memory of Saratogans who died during World War I. The arch was moved to the present location when the highway through town was widened in 1965, but it was a close call. At one point, the city was ready to destroy, rather than move, the arch, but enough concerned citizens protested such action.

In my next column, I will take up the remaining five events on the list. Meanwhile, here are the dates: 1924, 1927, 1934, 1941 and 1956. Anyone want to guess their significance?

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