Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

Old bridge once offered shelter to homeless

In 1965, when Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road was widened to four lanes into the Village and continued as two-lane Saratoga-Los Gatos Road, one of the structural casualties was the arch bridge over Saratoga Creek.

The attractive two-lane bridge, built in 1927, was of a style widely used in Santa Clara County, many specimens of which survived into recent years on Quito Road and Pierce Road, among other places. What set this one apart, however, was the smoke-blackened interior of the arch, the result of countless campfires over the years, and therein lies a rather poignant chapter of Saratoga history.

As youngsters, my contemporaries and I spoke of the men who camped under the bridge, and built those fires, as tramps or bums. My mother, who had an aversion to demeaning labels, was careful to refer to them as itinerants. Today, they would be classified simply as homeless.

I remember them well: shabbily dressed characters who would show up at the back door and ask if there was any work they could do in return for a meal. I don't think my mother ever turned any of them away, whether there was work or not, and it's likely the location of our house was passed around the fraternity of tramps-bums-itinerants-homeless as a place no penniless tourist should miss.

Whatever the network, I don't recall these low-profile individuals as ever causing problems, either for our household or the town generally. They'd just materialize, maybe camp for a time under the bridge, and then be on their way. I remember my mother saving bacon grease in one-pound coffee cans to give these men for use in cooking, and they were very glad to get it. Possibly some of that ingredient accounted for the greasiness of the smoke that clung to the bridge.

In small, unincorporated Saratoga, help for the down-and-out element was strictly an individual matter. Over in Los Gatos, though, there was an organized relief effort, led by Lyman Feathers, at the time a town traffic officer and later police chief. About 1931, he obtained the use of a warehouse-type building which came to be known as "Hotel Feathers," a place where a man could get an evening meal, lodging for a night and breakfast the next morning. It was supported by private donations and the Red Cross. The cost was a reported 12 cents a night per person.

Los Gatos not only was a larger town--something like 4,000 population--but it also had freight trains traveling the railroad line that ran through the middle of town and on through the mountains to Santa Cruz.

Boxcars, known to drifters as "side-door Pullmans," assured "Hotel Feathers" a fairly steady clientele.

This brings up another facet of the overall issue of homelessness. There always have been rootless people who were and are vagabonds by choice. Railroads gave them great mobility, and an entire folklore built up around hobos. Today, one doesn't hear much about "hobo jungles," although they no doubt exist in some places. But we hear plenty about homeless encampments.

Which brings up the Saratoga angle again. In an early Stereopticon column I described how, during the Depression, Saratoga was a pretty good place to be poor. Looking back, there were a fair number of people here who, by current standards, would be among today's homeless, simply because they couldn't afford any reasonable kind of housing, especially in Saratoga.

They lived in dwellings that were humble to the point of being marginal, but back then it was acceptable.

I think of one couple who, in the late 1930s, had been renting a house on Saratoga Avenue but then found themselves unable to pay the rent. So that summer--it must have been 1937--they simply set up camp along the creek. I know they didn't spend a winter there, and I'm not sure where they ultimately went, but for those few months they were quite happy in their alfresco quarters.

Just what the solution will be to the growing problem of homelessness, no one can imagine.

And there is small comfort in the fact that even in a kinder, gentler time, it was a problem too, though not as serious.

[ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ]