Saratoga News file photograph
Workers lay railway track on Saratoga Avenue about 1903.
Flanged wheels on steel rails carried the U. S. population westward in the 19th century. In the 20th, they were a convenience to Saratoga. Up to a point, that is. When the last Peninsular Railway streetcar rolled through town in late March of 1933, there was no sentimental celebration, no clamor for souvenirs, no rush for photo ops.
The electric interurban line that had served the community for 29 years was truly a creature of its times, and those times did not envision the era of paved roads and automobile and truck traffic. To elaborate: When the San Jose-Los Gatos Interurban Railway Co. planned its line connecting those towns by way of Saratoga, just after the turn of the century, there were only dirt roads between those communities, and automobiles were pretty much playthings of the rich.
This was a time when public transportation was a moneymaking business, and the last word in inter-city transportation was a sleek electric rail car, with trolley humming along an overhead wire and lordly motorman, one hand on the controller and the other grasping the cord to sound reedy blasts on a compressed-air whistle. It made sense at that time for the promoters of this particular line to obtain a franchise to lay track alongside (and in the middle of) county roads, rather than acquire rights-of-way for more direct point-to-point service between towns.
In this respect, then, the Peninsular--its corporate name since 1909--was something of a hybrid. It was an interurban in the sense that it connected cities and towns--the "Campbell short line" was opened in 1905, completing the loop around the valley--but it was a local streetcar line in the sense that it made wayside stops.
A rancher could flag down a car as it crossed his driveway; passengers were advised that holding a lighted match would assist the motorman in making a correct stop at night.
In Saratoga, the line came down Saratoga Avenue and turned up Saratoga-Los Gatos Road. At the time rail was being laid, it was planned to have a spur going up the canyon to serve Congress Hall, the luxurious hotel near the mineral springs that gave Saratoga its name, after Saratoga Springs in New York. The hotel burned in June 1903 and was not rebuilt, but Congress Springs remained a popular picnic ground until World War II, when the San Jose Water Works fenced off the property to protect the watershed.
Meanwhile, it was decided that, with or without hotel, Congress Springs merited a rail connection, and for many years this was a popular destination for Sunday picnickers who could enjoy a ride across the valley and up a mile and a half through the wooded canyon. Congress Springs was one of two such locations; across the valley, in the hills behind San Jose, Alum Rock Park had its own mineral springs and a streetcar line to serve it.
The Peninsular's valley loop connected San Jose, Los Gatos, Saratoga and Campbell. In 1914, service was opened to Palo Alto on a line running out Stevens Creek Road through Monta Vista and along the present route of Foothill Expressway. A short line ran from Palo Alto into the Stanford University campus, and at least one Saratoga resident was able to attend Stanford, catching the streetcar in front of her house and traveling all the way into the campus.
In the years when springtime was blossom time, the Peninsular achieved some sort of marketing coup by scheduling 65-mile Blossom Trolley Trips. Running, as it did, through and around orchards, the line afforded passengers an unequaled opportunity to view--and inhale--the matchless phenomenon of mile after mile of trees in fragrant bloom.
But the Peninsular needed more than blossoms. True, it carried people to and from their jobs in San Jose, and Saratoga kids to grammar school here and high school in Los Gatos, but it was also competing for highway space with automobiles, and the automobiles were winning.
As a youngster, I can remember the Peninsular in its declining days. The cars were old, the roadbed not well maintained, and when a car got up to 30 or so miles an hour, it swayed wonderfully from side to side. People who remark ruefully that we had a practical public-transportation system, and that we foolishly got rid of it, are missing the point. If the Peninsular were to reappear magically in its old configuration we would have an epic traffic snarl.
I think what these people are saying is that they would like to be able to savor a time when the Peninsular was, indeed, the last word in public transportation.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, July 3, 1996.
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