Saratoga Stereopticon
Leave the cookie-cutter style for others
By Willys Peck
Is it just my imagination, or does Saratoga have a serious traffic problem? The latter seems more likely when I see cars on Saratoga Avenue backed up beyond my driveway as they wait for the signal to change some three blocks ahead. This usually happens only on weekends, when, I suppose, holiday destinations have something to do with it.
But there are still plenty of what I call "born again" days, when, to use one of my favorite aphorisms, the best way to cross Saratoga Avenue is to be born on the other side. These are in stark contrast to "flowing cup" days, when traffic is so sparse that I can get in and out of my driveway with ease, and my cup runneth over. Like flowing.
It's hard to realize that it was just a short 40 years ago when, as a middle-aged student at the Santa Clara University School of Law, I needed to allow only 20 minutes to get from the house to my seat in class. The installation of a dozen or so traffic lights along the route has rather changed that scenario. At one of those lights, have you ever had the sensation of aging perceptibly while waiting for the full cycle of changes? Yes, I'm referring to the Cox Avenue intersection.
However, this musing over kinder, gentler times doesn't accomplish anything by way of a solution. If you think you have a problem, how do you propose to go about solving it? If there is a superabundance of vehicular traffic, don't you simply create more highway lanes to accommodate it? Let's look at the Saratoga situation. Here is a well-defined core, the Village, with four thoroughfares leading into it from, roughly, the four compass points. OK, here's two-lane Saratoga Avenue. Couldn't it be widened to four lanes along its final mile? The answer: It could, over a charnel house of dead bodies, mine among them. The citizenry involved has spoken, petitioning the city to have it designated a Heritage Lane, which status, it is hoped, would stifle any misguided move toward four lanes. I've said it before in this space and I'll say it again (recycling): Saratoga Avenue is one of the loveliest approaches to this or any other town (insert plug for preservation of Heritage Orchard), and observing a 35 mph speed limit shouldn't warp anyone's personality (I should tell that to the guy who passed me on the right the other day).
Also, suppose it was widened to four lanes, would that mean the same would have to be done for Big Basin Way beyond the intersection? Get real.
Then there's Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road--originally Mountain View Road, before there was a Sunnyvale. Been there, done that. This was widened about 35 years ago, creating the two-lane-to-one-lane situation just past the intersection that frequently inspires an exchange of earthy epithets between drivers trying to occupy the same space at the same time.
So what do we do, widen Saratoga-Los Gatos Road? I would consider that regrettable, to say the least. For one thing, it would probably threaten the old library building, now occupied by the Book-Go-Round, a true Saratoga landmark. Then there's the beautifully maintained garden in front of the museum at the Historical Park, not to mention the McWilliams House with the Chamber of Commerce office, all in the path of progress. Finally, we come to the stone wall in front of Our Lady of Fatima Villa, and let's take a look at some history here.
When the San Jose & Los Gatos Interurban Railway was laying its tracks shortly after 1900, it was necessary to make a 400-foot cut through a sizable hill at that point. That's when San Jose real estate tycoon T.S. Montgomery, whose house was on the present Villa site, had the stone wall built. Legend has it - and perhaps some deeds--that the wall encroached on the road right-of-way. Directly across, there was a considerable embankment, but no wall, in front of where G.A. Wood built his pillared, neoclassical mansion, Woodleigh, in 1911. That embankment has been pretty well eliminated through grading.
The stone wall was the work of William D. Creek of Saratoga, who, I understand, was county road master at the time. That wall is a remarkable example of stonemasonry. There is no mortar binding the stones; they are fitted together with the precision and skill characteristic of the ancient Romans in building their aqueducts. And, barring such cataclysmic events as highway widening, that stone wall may last as long. It's another Saratoga landmark.
So, what am I driving at with these mutterings? Is this just another curmudgeonly diatribe against progress? I'd like to think not. I'd like to think that any message would have to do with putting up with a little inconvenience, even if it means driving only 35 mph, simply to preserve some of the things that make this place uniquely desirable. There are enough examples of cookie-cutter suburbia around without getting into the same box.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
