More than 100 years ago, the Village was in the midst of a similar transformation. Martin Kane, a blacksmith, had built a shop and social hall on Big Basin Way. Very soon, it became a center for dances, meetings and community gatherings.

The rest of the country was suffering from a major economic depression in the early 1890s, but California seemed to be insulated from its ravages. The turn of the century introduced a growth spurt in Saratoga Village.

T.S. Montgomery, a developer, came to town accompanied by architects. The firm of Wolfe & McKenzie built several buildings, including the Fir Tree Inn and the Saratoga State Bank.

Saratoga's first Blossom Festival was held around the same time. One of the most important benefits of the festival was the reorganization of the almost forgotten Village Improvement Association.

In recent times, there has been a fresh buzz about the Village. Change is afoot and Big Basin Way might be getting ready for another metamorphosis. April Halberstadt, the curator of the Saratoga Historical Museum since 2000, is an expert on the subject.

"I was really interested in working at the museum because the West Valley has such a rich and important history and there seems to be no systematic public collection of local material," Halberstadt said.

She trained in architecture and urban planning. "I had some early training as an engineering draftsman and ended up working in telecommunications engineering for more than a decade," she said.

Halberstadt's husband is a writer and photographer. "I started helping him with his books. As we collected research material, our publisher suggested that we do related books. I have written several books on tractors, farm history and farm equipment, a book on barns, one on bungalows, a local history of the Willow Glen neighborhood and a collaboration with my husband on American railroad depots."

She has another book in the works right now, a history of the Saratoga Volunteer Fire Department.

Halberstadt said that she wants to educate people about Saratoga history to create a sense of hometown for all the newer residents, particularly the children. "I have been very fortunate to feel grounded, comfortable and secure in my own neighborhood and it is an experience I want to share," she says.

To that end, Halberstadt gives us a walking tour through the Village's history:

By April Halberstadt

While many of us are aware that Saratoga is a historic place, not everyone understands why we are so special. Perhaps a better understanding of our past can help provide some clear directions for our future.

Our Village is over 150 years old. It is one of the earliest towns in California, one of the first in the Bay Area and one of the first in the West. It was a planned town, first platted in 1852, not just a haphazard collection of shacks. The other local communities we now know as Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Los Altos, Campbell and Milpitas would not appear until decades later; most are 20th-century towns. The little village we now call Los Gatos was beginning to appear, but its early residents lacked the initial vision to create the organizations that characterize a dynamic community.

Site and climate

The Village is the adored child of a wonderful marriage of weather and terrain. It enjoys some marvelous benefits from this location, benefits that investors and developers have exploited but not managed to erase.

The Big Basin road itself is also very significant and contributed to the early success of the settlement. It was the pathway used by the Native Americans to travel from Mission Santa Clara to the Pacific Ocean. It was one of the first improved roads in the county, one of the first in the state of California and the first designated as a scenic highway.

The birth of the Village

The Native Americans were the first to recognize and exploit the extraordinary advantages offered by the site. Saratoga Creek provides a wonderful natural pathway to the resources of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The Native Americans generously shared this information and riches with the Spanish settlers who appeared in the late 1770s.

The steep hillside and the reliable presence of running water encouraged pioneer immigrant William Campbell to build a flume in order to deliver water to his water-powered mill. The mill was built in 1848, before the Gold Rush and before statehood. The presence of the trail through the hills to the Pacific Ocean encouraged Campbell and his friends to improve the grade and create a toll road. The tiny community of Saratoga had become so significant by 1851 that it appears on some of the earliest California maps, along with San Francisco, San Jose and a little port town that would become Redwood City.

By 1852, the enterprising McCarthy family had surveyed and platted the town, which they named McCarthysville. Recording this plat was an extremely important development because it indicates that the little enclave thought of itself as a real town, not just an assortment of houses thrown up on a moment's notice. Saratoga became a post office location in 1855 and thereby secured her place as one of California's earliest towns.

Because Saratoga Village had a post office, it became a regular gathering place for the many residents of the local area. Several stores were opened in the immediate vicinity to serve those residents who came to town to pick up their mail. The Village was a small community but it was stable and productive, serving a wide area with its lumber and related wood products. By the mid-1860s, Saratoga had become a substantial little enclave with a variety of important enterprises. Two paper mills were started in 1869. The famous Congress Springs resort opened its doors just a few years earlier, in 1866.

Martin McCarthy, the family patriarch, died in an accident in 1864, leaving his widow with four small children. But Hannah McCarthy was a remarkable person, and her overwhelming economic success in later years is quite consistent with her character. She was the first woman in Santa Clara County to take out a license to operate her own business, appearing in the files of the County Recorder in 1852.

Although the town of McCarthysville changed its name to Saratoga during the Hannah McCarthy era (the change took place in 1864), the first phase of Saratoga Village development did not come to a close until her death in 1893. Buildings in the Village that remain from the McCarthysville era include the John Henry House, the McWilliams House and the Swanee Dress Shop, the Erwin King and the William King houses, the Maclay cottage, the Fabretti properties, the Grover House and Green Store property. The Hannah McCarthy vineyard house on nearby Lomita Avenue is still standing.

The Village, 1890-1920

The seeds of change were sown in the 1870s and 1880s and began to produce significant results by 1895. The first significant change was the appearance of the South Pacific Coast Railroad through Los Gatos in 1878. Saratoga farmers and orchard owners now had a way to get their crops to market.

Several important community groups were initiated about this time. The Saratoga Village Improvement Association was organized in 1887. This group was the forerunner of the city council, the Chamber of Commerce and the board of trade. This is the group that changed the name of Lumber Street to Big Basin Way, in order to present a better community image.

The Peninsular Railway from downtown San Jose and Los Gatos to Saratoga was completed in 1903. Several small residential subdivisions now appeared to take advantage of the new commuter rail line. These residential areas are now known as Oak Place and Lutheria Way and they are now nearly a century old.

Architectural styles in Saratoga Village changed dramatically. New business buildings now had a distinctive architectural style--single story structures built in the Mission revival style with a stucco facade and red tile detailing. Most of the new buildings were built below Third Street and Big Basin Way and several of them faced the new Blaney Plaza. Several of these buildings remain today including Corinthian Corners, The Bank and the Hogg Building, once home to the Saratoga Drug Store.

Saratoga residents also dedicated two public parks adjacent to the Village at this time. These spaces are Blaney Plaza with its signature Memorial Arch, and Wildwood Park, a large municipal space that forms the western boundary of the Village.

Another magnificent structure was a new school on Oak Street built in 1898. Four new churches--Sacred Heart Catholic Church, St. John's Episcopal Church, the Congregational Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church--were built around the same time. Today only one of Saratoga's early churches remains.

Finally, one cannot overlook the importance of the presence of the Saratoga Post Office in maintaining Village vitality. Saratoga was a rural community until the mid-1950s. There were no street addresses, so local residents all visited the post office at least once a day to pick up their mail from their post office boxes. This practice guaranteed a steady stream of patrons to the Village.

The automobile Village

The Great Depression of the 1930s and the World War II years dampened the appearance of new construction in the Saratoga area. Few new structures appeared in Santa Clara County, although certain wealthy individuals still managed to build houses in the Saratoga hills. After the war, however, the appearance of dozens of new businesses in Sunnyvale and Cupertino created a tremendous demand for housing. New houses were built with the automobile in mind, and new shopping areas also provided convenient parking. Saratoga Village found itself scrambling to update its aging buildings and provide adequate shopping for its new residents.

By the mid-1950s, the little town of Saratoga found itself highly conflicted. It wanted to remain rural and charming, a little Village in the West Valley foothills. The nearby city of San Jose was annexing property and enlarging its tax base. Reluctantly, Saratoga decided to incorporate, to keep San Jose from swallowing it whole.

The construction of enormous subdivisions created a demand for convenient shopping. Saratoga Village found itself in direct competition with several modern shopping centers along Sunnyvale Road, built specifically to accommodate the car. The new Argonaut Shopping Center became the shape of the future.

Struggling to keep up, several Village property owners demolished their older buildings in favor of shopping mall style structures. Other owners realized that it was important to preserve the look and feel of the historic Village but did not want to lose customers to larger and more modern stores. Saratoga Village Center, designed by local builder Kurt Gross, was opened in the 1950s, the prominent parking lot predicting the wave of the future.

For the last 40 years, parking and traffic concerns have been the tail that wags the dog of economic development. In addition to parking and traffic studies, outside consultants were hired to create planning strategies for the Village. The Livingston-Blaney Village Study appeared in 1968. A Saratoga General Plan revision in 1973 made many recommendations for improvement, making suggestions for residential, commercial, traffic circulation, parking and pedestrian uses. The Mackay-Stomps engineering firm was hired in the late 1980s to make still another plan for the Village. Their plan went to a public hearing in July 1987, and included strategies for historic planning districts and suggestions for policy changes.

Major sidewalk and streetscape improvements took place in 1975.

The old-style street lamps appeared at the same time.

The construction was very disruptive to the local merchants and took many months to complete. The project was designed and built by the California State Highway Department, known as CalTrans, since Big Basin Way is a state highway. But removing the unsightly poles made a tremendous improvement in the appearance of the Village.

The city of Saratoga created the historic heritage commission in 1982 and charged them with the responsibility of making an inventory of Saratoga's historic structures. Ten years later the first historic inventory was published. In an attempt to preserve the look and feel of the Village, design guidelines were created for new buildings that would be added to the Village. These guidelines were adopted by the city council in 1991.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when the Village began to be noted for its antique shops and its restaurants. The old Methodist Church on Saratoga-Los Gatos Road was one notable shop, later taken over by a pair of owners who named it Corinthian Antiques during the 1960s. They expanded their business, taking over the vacant premises just down the street and renaming it Corinthian Corners. But this memorable shop was just one of dozens of antique dealers with businesses in the Village.

With so many antique stores, it was probably inevitable that someone would start a restaurant. Louise Mendelsohn, known as something of a madcap and a wicked wit, expanded her shop and turned it into a restaurant known as The Plumed Horse. Louise and her husband collected little interesting artifacts from local history to decorate their restaurant and their establishment attracted a wide following.

Another notable early restaurant was La Mere Michelle, specializing in French cuisine.

One local architect has left a tremendous legacy to the modern Village, either designing or updating dozens of Village structures. Warren Heid designed the modern Saratoga Inn. He also designed two of the more interesting shopping centers that open onto Big Basin Way and helped preserve the character of many of the older structures. Heid's own office is one of the oldest structures in the Village, once the home of John Henry, engineer for the Saratoga paper mill.

The future of the Village

Adding additional offices and business establishments to the Village has been a challenge. The Village has always had a mix of residential and commercial structures along Big Basin Way, and it has been a struggle to provide privacy for the residents while offering adequate customer access for the businesses.

But just as the Peninsular Railway and later the automobile changed the Village overnight, a new technology has appeared that is reshaping our landscape. That technology is related to the Internet, a communications device that allows one person to operate an international business from home. We know that many of our local residents already do a great deal of their work from home. But it is not yet clear to us what impact this is having on our Village. We are still not certain how to shape our Village to meet the challenge of technology.