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Saratoga Stereopticon
Saratoga could have been very different
By Willys Peck
I call this mind game "What If?" since it involves postulating an event that occurs or fails to occur in a certain situation. With history as a subject, it can be a stimulus for further study. For example: What if the Declaration of Independence died in congressional committee? OK, OK, so the Continental Congress of 1776 did things differently from the bunch now in Washington, but you get the idea.
Saratoga has at least two potential "What If?" situations that make for interesting speculation. As an old rail fan, I like this one: What if the South Pacific Coast Railroad elected to build its line to the coast through Saratoga instead of Los Gatos?
Oddly enough, this actually had been proposed in the mid-1870s, when the SPC was preparing to build its line from Alameda, down the East Bay and over the mountain to the San Lorenzo Valley and Santa Cruz. It might have looked good in terms of distance sketched out on a map, but very soon it was agreed that the configuration of the mountains and passes made it unfeasible.
For that matter, the route through Los Gatos wasn't a piece of cake. There were eight crossings of Los Gatos Creek required as the line went up the canyon, and six tunnels had to be bored between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz, two of them more than a mile long.
But what gave the Saratoga proposal its impact was the timing. In the Sept. 21, 1871, issue of the San Jose Mercury News, the following appeared: "Saratoga, a fine little manufacturing town nestled in the foothills, is one of the most inviting places in the county. It will probably become a large manufacturing town and summer watering place."
Sure. All it would need would be a railroad running through it. But about that industry; it was here, all right, and, had it not been for the concurrent proliferation of orchards, it might have grown, with or without a railroad, just as the newspaper predicted. There was a paper mill, located about where Pamela Way is today; a pasteboard mill, first of its kind on the Pacific Coast, located in the vicinity of the present Wildwood Park; and a grist mill and tannery, situated near the present entrance to Hakone Gardens.
These enterprises all went their separate ways. The paper mill burned in 1883, never to be rebuilt. The pasteboard mill moved to Corralitos in 1880, and the stone grist mill and tannery became a winery, until the building was ruined by the 1906 earthquake. Where the historical speculation figures in this picture is, would these industries have stayed or been rebuilt, to be joined by others, if there had been a railroad? Don't lose any sleep over it.
Another Saratoga "What If?" worth pondering is of much more recent vintage; 1956, to be exact, and here it is: What if 159 people out of 3,299 had voted differently in the incorporation election 45 years ago? That was the slim margin that made Saratoga a city and set into motion the pageant of local politics that endures to this day.
It was also the slim margin that undoubtedly kept a large chunk of the present city from becoming part of San Jose. For those who have arrived in the past 35 or so years, the post-World War II annexation thrusts of San Jose would mean very little. But when there were significantly large areas of orchard land--legally "uninhabited" in the sense of requiring a vote of residents, rather than just the property owner, on the issue of annexation--San Jose marched across the valley staking out its boundaries.
One result was a series of defensive incorporations on the part of people who wanted to retain their own town identities. First was Campbell, in 1952. Then came Cupertino in 1955, followed by Saratoga the next year. In 1957, Monte Sereno also incorporated, more, it was said, to fend off Los Gatos and Saratoga than the juggernaut to the east.
One of San Jose's selling points was that it allowed what were considered minimum lot sizes. To an orchardist wanting to subdivide his land, this was a powerful incentive to seek annexation to that city. The more building sites, the more money from the developer. It seems a fair surmise that a large part of Saratoga's eastern and northeastern section could have become simply the Saratoga district of San Jose. That's what happened to Willow Glen, once an incorporated city, and Alviso, one of the oldest municipalities in the state
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
