This editorial cartoon ran in the April 26, 1956 edition of the Saratoga News, predicting "factories and slums" if Saratoga's incorporation effort failed.
If memory serves, it was in 1950 or 1951 when, as a newspaper reporter, I covered some commendatory banquet and quoted the speaker, a top public utility executive, in saying that the future of the Santa Clara Valley would always be in agriculture.
Mainly, he had been extolling the advantages of industry--this was long before Silicon Valley--that already was getting a substantial foothold, but he was also hedging his bets with the still-powerful growers.
What happened to his prediction has been dramatized in particularly telling fashion by Santa Clara County census figures: 290,547 in 1950; 1,497,577 in 1990, more than a fivefold increase. That's in people, not trees.
Saratoga, of course, figured in this burgeoning growth, but there was an early effort to put on the brakes. It was called incorporation.
In the unfolding drama of of growth in the 1950s and after, San Jose was playing the heavy. Still in the theatrical idiom, the playwright and director was affable City Manager Antony P. "Dutch" Hamann, who had plenty of help implementing his dream of manifest destiny.
The resulting Panzer-like annexation thrusts by San Jose across the valley got a lot of people worried. One of the biggest guffaws in a San Jose Newspaper Guild Gridiron Dinner show of the time was prompted by the following exchange:
"Can you tell me where the San Jose city limits are?"
"No, but if you wait right here, they'll be along any minute."
I recall covering the San Jose City Council meeting at which the Los Gatos Cemetery, now Memorial Park, was officially annexed.
It was a story that cried out for a lead such as, "A lot of people who said they wouldn't be caught dead as San Jose residents are going to be disappointed," but cooler heads prevailed.
Actually, there was no real reason to hold San Jose up as a hate image, other than this unbridled expansion. After all, it was the area's shopping and entertainment center. It was the county seat. Everyone had to go to San Jose for some reason at one time or another.
But people who lived in Campbell wanted to be able to say they lived in Campbell, not in San Jose, whose boundaries were lapping at their very doorsteps. So the residents of Campbell incorporated their city in 1952. Cupertino followed in 1955, for the same reasons.
In Saratoga, meanwhile, the same reactions were evident, but they seemed more tempered. While most people resented the idea of being annexed by San Jose, some where equally opposed to being part of any city. If they were being well-served by Santa Clara County and the various special districts, they argued, why create another level of government?
Another factor involved some orchardists who, knowing that development was inevitable, also knew that San Jose was amenable to the idea of zoning smaller lot sizes. The more building lots per acre, the higher the selling prices for their land.
All these attitudes and their concomitant efforts, which were considerable, were brought into focus in the election of Sept. 25, 1956, when about 75 percent of the 4,473 voters within the proposed boundaries voted 1,729 to 1,570, including absentee ballots, to incorporate the city of Saratoga.
At the outset, the new City Council, headed by Mayor Burton R. Brazil, a San Jose State College (not yet a university) political science professor, made the course of the new city known: large lot sizes, minimum commercial expansion, minimum city services to keep costs down.
In the ensuing 40 years, there have been variations on this theme, but no really radical departures, although some may argue the point.
The inescapable fact remains that Saratoga, blessed by nature as few communities ever have been, has maintained its integrity as one of the choicest of dwelling places.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, June 5, 1996.
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