Photograph by Robert Scheer
A group of girls from A Special Place Daycare in Campbell watches the activity at a neighboring group picnic.
By Suzanne Cristallo
The trees know it's fall at Saratoga Springs. The quiet of a September weekday is broken only by the sound of leaves raining from the alder and sycamore trees nudged into motion by an afternoon breeze. The summer hordes have gone, and the canyon is drowsily returning to a more natural state.
Where Booker and Saratoga creeks converge at the center of the old resort, large trout circle in a rock-dammed pool, awaiting the weekenders who will whoop and holler at their demise at the end of a line.
Just up Big Basin Way, beyond a grove of redwoods, the towering stone spans of Long Bridge stretch across the canyon of Saratoga Creek near Sanborn Road. The old bridge is a two-lane reminder of the area's roots. Today it is part of Big Basin Way and has survived more than nine decades of travel by wayfarers up the mountain.
Before 1901, when its stones were first mortared into place, it was part of the Saratoga Pescadero Turnpike and Wagon Road. Its wooden predecessor, built in 1870, carried teamsters and horses hauling redwoods from the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the canyon was an untouched wilderness. Home of towering redwood trees, grizzlies, mountain lions, wildcats and deer, the area was first seen as a boon to settlers by William Campbell.
A highly observant man, Campbell decided to build a sawmill at the spot which today is known as Saratoga Springs. According to an account by Florence Cunningham in Saratoga's First Hundred Years, since settlers from the East found the musty odor and coldness of California adobe unbearable, Campbell believed redwood would be the material chosen by the settling population for their homes and stores.
So in 1848, Campbell built the first water-powered mill in the county on the banks of Arroyo Quito, 212 miles up the canyon. Assisted by his two sons, David and Benjamin (the latter founded the city that bears his surname), they felled the trees and whipsawed the lumber from the forests above his mill, effectively opening the canyon to human endeavor.
The Arroyo Quito soon became known as Campbell's Creek and, later, Saratoga Creek. It gushed out of the mountain and meandered through the canyon under the Long Bridge, where the banks of its cooling stream became a favorite resting place for men driving their animals up the road.
Meanwhile, 212 miles back down the road, a village was thriving. It was called McCartysville or Tollgate, names for the settlement that came from Martin McCarty, the builder of the Turnpike Road, and the settlement's designation as the toll collection point for travelers using the road. It was next known as Banks Mill, and in 1865 it was officially named Saratoga, a name which local historian Willys Peck, citing Cunningham's book, says is the Iroquois Indian word meaning "floating scum on water." It was a term which probably arose locally because of mineral springs in the area that tend to contribute a film to the water, not unlike the Saratoga Springs in New York state.
The meaning has created controversy among local politicians seeking to promote a certain image in the town, Peck admits.
In 1876, French immigrants Joseph Rispaud and August Maurice Garcin purchased 400 acres on both sides of the Saratoga-Pescadero Turnpike and Wagon Road at Long Bridge.
When their partnership ended, they split the property, Rispaud taking the uphill side of the road, which he planted with vineyards, and Garcin the lower side, where he developed a recreational resort called Long Bridge, after the span towering above his property. The resting spot under the bridge near Campbell's mill then became an attraction for valley dwellers. He built a lodge, saloon and picnic grounds. "Carry-alls" loaded with sweltering valley residents seeking the cool began a tradition that lives strongly today.
When Garcin died without heirs, his property reverted to the state and was purchased in 1921 by Rene Rispaud, daughter-in-law of Joseph and young widow of his son, Henry. Her parents were bakers and owners of the first French bakery in San Jose, the El Dorado Baking Company.
Rene was a very hard worker, according to her grandson, Bill Giannini, 54, who is the present-day owner of Saratoga Springs. Rene brought her two small daughters, Henriette (Bill's mother) and Eugenie, to Long Bridge and plunged into making the resort a home and a thriving business.
When they first came, the girls attended Booker School just down the road.
"The 11 children attending in the early 1920s ranged from first to eighth grade. Booker was the first school in Saratoga in 1881 and it closed in 1923," recalls Eugenie Rispaud Bailey in Mardi Bennett's Images of Long Ago. The girls later attended Oak Street School, now Saratoga Elementary, where their mother contributed many hours of her time to the school board.
"It was a rugged life," Giannini says. "Grandma ran the resort as a picnic grounds with some overnight camping. Many families and clubs used it. She also entertained a lot; there were a lot of French settlers here in the hills. She had a huge dining table and kitchen and did a lot of cooking, having the neighbors in for lamb, beef and pork--some of which was raised in pens behind the house by friend Charlie Lottie, who was with her for over 20 years."
The resort was patronized by clubs, schools, churches and family groups. Particularly popular among groups of all kinds was the dance pavilion, an expansive wooden floor built around mature oaks and rimmed by other towering trees. Couples two-stepped, charlestoned and waltzed around the trees and past onlookers seated around its perimeter.
There was also an outdoor bowling alley that present-day observers marvel never warped from winter rains.
Giannini recalls coming to Long Bridge with his family on weekends as a child, he and his brother collecting 50 cents per car at the entrance to the grounds. His great aunt Mathilda Pourroy Reynaud, quoted in Images of Long Ago, remembers "people parking down the road and then jamming themselves into another car so they could all get into the grounds for 50 cents."
Her son Henry Reynaud (Rene's nephew), who was raised in the park area, also recalls in Images of Long Ago that "Long Bridge was a self-sufficient community with a general store, gas station and bar. The upper floor of the store had a dance floor, and they occasionally showed amateur movies there."
Bill Giannini recalled the room being used for entertaining friends and neighbors.
"There was a stage at one end, and we would entertain one another with piano playing and storytelling," he says.
Rene Rispaud ran the resort until 1952, a year after Campbell Creek was renamed Saratoga Creek. Failing health forced her into leasing the resort to Stub Stollery, a San Francisco Chronicle writer and public relations expert, who renamed the resort Saratoga Springs in 1955. Rene died a year later at the age of 64, leaving the property to her daughters.
Stollery managed the resort for five years, adding a new swimming pool, volleyball and horseshoe courts, other facilities and some cottages.
In 1960, Warren and Essie Fisher took over the lease, calling the place Fisher Saratoga Springs. Other lessors subsequently took over, and the property began to fall into disrepair. In the latter part of the '60s, "hippie" squatters began living permanently in the campgrounds.
In 1972, the corporate world was losing its appeal for Bill Giannini. At 31, he decided to leave his high-pressure sales job as marketing manager for National Cash Register and take up resort ownership.
He and his wife, Linda, ignored the warnings of his family about the hard life it provided and plunged into it as his grandmother once had.
"I left the high pressure of NCR for the high pressure of this," he smiles, gesturing toward the Springs, "but I'm working for myself."
With two children, the Gianninis moved from a 3,500-square-foot home in Modesto into a one-bedroom cabin at the resort. "That was the toughest part," he recalls. "It was a dramatic cut in income."
Absentee ownership and deferred maintenance had left Saratoga Springs in shabby condition with "clientele not what you'd want," Giannini says. He went to court to expel the squatters and began the task of attracting new clientele and restoring and expanding the facilities.
Long Bridge, the old general store that was also his grandmother's home, was converted to a restaurant and leased to an operator, but a fire destroyed it in 1978. Meanwhile, Giannini began promoting the park as a place for weddings and reunions. He approached the corporate world to handle company picnics, meetings and retirement parties.
"I found it was better to cater to groups rather than promoting use by the general public," he says. However, the park now handles both.
Actively participating in the running of the resort with their parents are the three Gianinni children: Brad, 28, runs the catering and food departments; Mimi, 26, works summers while she pursues a teaching career; and John, 21, who was born after the family moved to the Springs, is studying environmental sciences. He may be the one to continue the family tradition at the park, according to his father.
There have been lots of changes at Saratoga Springs since the days when August Garcin served the hot and dusty travelers on the old Turnpike Road. Some of the trees still exist, today shading the campers and picnickers who are not so different from those of 100 years ago. Beauty is appreciated in all generations, and the Gianninis are there to assure that others may experience what they have grown up with. "Our stated mission is to make people happy," Giannini says.
Saratoga Springs closes the day-use picnic facility November through April, but camping facilities stay open year around.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, September 25, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved