Photograph courtesy of Bill Wulf
There were two trestles between Los Gatos and Saratoga--the one shown here at Mendelsohn Lane,
in about 1905--and another where Daves Avenue entered Los Gatos-Saratoga Road.
It's a matter of municipal pride to have the "first" this or the "only" that.
For example: San Luis Obispo claims to be home to the nation's first motel; the first electric streetcar line was installed in Richmond, Va., in 1889; and the first miniature golf course was built on the grounds of a small hotel near the top of Tennessee's Lookout Mountain by owner Garnet Carter in 1917. In the early 1930s, Los Gatos joined the mini golf craze with two downtown courses.
Los Gatos claims the only suicide in the United States by guillotine. This rare slice of history occurred in the hills above town when a lonely French woodsman fashioned a sidechopper-style guillotine with a rope he pulled while laying face up on a log chopping block. The blade did not sever his head but cut his throat enough to cause death. Photographs from the head side and body side appear in a single frame in the downstairs reference portion of the Los Gatos Library. The photos elicit sympathy rather than horror. Students of the mind list loneliness as a cause of suicide.
There had been horse-drawn streetcars before Richmond produced the first electric-powered streetcar in 1889.
While electric-powered interurbans did not originate in Los Gatos, the Interurban Railroad Line linking San Jose with Campbell, Los Gatos and Saratoga was started in 1904 and was the first of its type in the Santa Clara Valley.
The big red cars arrived hourly in their busiest years.
The cars were powered by an overhead electrical line, and the car's trolley was in contact with that electricity. Sometimes the trolley would jump the power line and the conductor would have to dismount and rearrange the trolley on the line. Hence, the expression to "jump your trolley" or to be slightly demented.
The interurban line afforded great freedom and even frustration for Los Gatos. Businessmen and women and a judge commuted to San Jose. A Los Gatos man courted his future wife with wildflowers on the San Jose run. Students commuted from Saratoga to Los Gatos High School until the line was abandoned in 1933. Riders could reach the Winchester Mystery House by interurban.
A more extensive trip was to transfer in San Jose onto a line that ran to Alum Rock Park in the foothills east of San Jose, where an indoor swimming pool and small zoo awaited.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, April 10, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved