Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

Population numbers depend on travel route

Will the real Saratoga please stand up? It's easy to envision a discussion among visitors who have arrived here by different routes.

"Well, this downtown certainly doesn't look like a city with a population of 29,645," says Visitor No. 1, who has arrived by driving north on Saratoga-Los Gatos Road, a.k.a. Highway 9.

"That's because it isn't," says Visitor No. 2, who has driven north on Highway 85 to get off on Saratoga Avenue. "Saratoga has only 28,400 people."

"Are you guys both nuts?" puts in Visitor No. 3, who has driven south on Highway 85. "Saratoga's population is only 28,050."

What had started as amiable barroom banter among strangers has now degenerated into a shouting match, at which point the friendly bartender intervenes.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he says with the air of one who has heard it all before, "you're all three correct. It's the city-limit signs that are in disagreement."

And, to borrow a phrase from Walter Cronkite, that's the way it is. You can't blame Caltrans, or whoever puts up city-limit signs; the population is changing. According to James Walgren of the city's Community Development Department, Saratoga's population in the 1980 U.S. Census was 30,046. Ten years later, in the 1990 Census, it had dropped to 28,873. Walgren said the current figure, based on data from the Census Bureau, the Association of Bay Area Governments and the state Department of Finance, is 30,600. So who can fault a few road signs?

In my opinion, Saratoga's population has always been rather fluid. For instance, before incorporation in 1956, there was a question as to just how much territory the name Saratoga encompassed. There was the school district, the fire district, the cemetery district, the sanitary district and the lighting district. In only a couple instances did the boundaries come close to coinciding. Probably the most accurate measure was the postal service area, and even here you had to take into account people who lived far back in the hills and got their mail at the Saratoga post office through general delivery. Technically, they were "in" Saratoga.

The fact that there wasn't an exponential increase in population starting 70 years ago was not due to a lack of hype. In 1928, the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce published a little booklet in which the wordsmiths were given free rein.

"Saratoga is pre-eminently and probably permanently a residential village," the text begins. "Its appeal is to those who are seeking the simplicity of village life combined with the convenience and comforts of the city. The beauty of its setting and the equability of its climate are matters of record.

"If California could send to other parts of the world its most attractive samples, those samples would be chosen in the immediate vicinity of Saratoga. As this is not possible, we can only ask those looking for a place in which to live and enjoy life to come to Saratoga before finally deciding."

Guess what? They all did.

In 1954, the Coro Foundation conducted a feasibility survey for incorporation proponents and found the population within the proposed boundaries--roughly those that were included in 1956-- to be 7,500. The fourfold increase since then doesn't seem so improbable when you consider that, in 1954, a good part of the future city still was orchard land.

One of the wilder population figures that I recall appeared in the infamous Life magazine article of June 10, 1946, concerning the Saratoga visit of actress Donna Reed, who was being "reindoctrinated with small-town atmosphere" in preparation for her appearance in It's a Wonderful Life. The town was described as "sleepy little Saratoga, Calif. (pop. 2,645), a farming community near the Santa Cruz Mountains." I think the writer got that population figure the same place he or she got the "friendly yokelry" and "town characters" also mentioned in the article. My dad was postmaster at the time, and, as I recall, he reckoned the population at about 1,500.

But about the current discrepancy between northbound Highway 9 and southbound Highway 85, a difference of almost 1,600 in the body count. In a recent talk before the Saratoga Men's Club, I advanced the theory that this number represented the "shadow voters" who tipped the balance in local elections contrary to the wishes of the presumed majority. The inquiry, I said, shouldn't be as to "who on Earth would vote this way" because we're not talking Earth.

We're talking Twilight Zone, and it just may be that the folks who put up those city-limit signs knew something that we don't. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet--Act 1, scene 5).

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