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Glen Una Drive once home to plenty of prunes

By Willys Peck

Maybe it has to do with old age, but I find that a single word spoken by someone else can initiate a stream of recollections and mental questions on my part that often require going to a reference work to refresh my memory as to details. The latest such occurrence was when someone referred to Glen Una Drive, pronouncing the second word as "Oonah." This wasn't the first time I heard that pronunciation, but most of the time I hear it as "Eewna," which is how I say it.

The dictionary listing describes Una as "a lovely lady in Spenser's Faerie Queen, intended as a personification of Truth," and also "used as a feminine proper name." It lists a broad "U" as in "cube." Our local Una was Una Handy Hume (take note of Hume Drive, another neighborhood name), daughter of George Handy, one of the three owners of 680 acres that ultimately included the largest bearing prune orchard in the world. And, no, I'm not going to get into the prune vs. plum issue that I ran into the ground in my last column. Incidentally, the "Glen" in the name pertained to the glen, or small valley, that extended out from the canyon of San Tomas Aquino Creek.

George W. Hume, owner of some Pacific Coast salmon canneries, bought the aforementioned three owners' parcels and gave the property to his son, George Francis Cutting Hume, who took the name of Frank G. Hume. The younger Hume proceeded to develop the land agriculturally. As mentioned, it included the world's largest bearing prune orchard: 350 acres, 160 trees to the acre.

The development involved more than just the planting of trees. We're talking late 19th century here, and what was going on at Glen Una Ranch was a true look into the future. For one thing, young Frank, who died in 1897 as the result of a fall while still in his 20s, had a steam-powered electric generating plant installed. Actually, there were two generating plants, one for direct and one for alternating current. This meant that the ranch had both incandescent and arc lights, and there was illumination for the residence, packing house, stable and other buildings, as well as for the 15-acre dry yard. Hume had all the work involved in handling and packing the fruit done at night to avoid the dust particles stirred up by men and horses in the harvesting.

Young Hume even laid the groundwork for utilities in Los Gatos when he ran a power line there in 1896 for supplying electricity for street-side arc lights. Although the ranch was closer to Saratoga than Los Gatos, Hume identified his holdings more with the latter community because--and this is a story I really like--his ranch hands were in the habit of going to pre-temperance-movement Saratoga and getting loaded at the town's many saloons to the point where they were unable to show up for work.

One reverberation of this aversion lasted until recent years. When young Hume set up his telephone line, he had it linked to the Los Gatos system, rather than Saratoga's. In later years, before the systems were combined and Glen Una already had become a fashionable residential area, this meant that a person conceivably had to pay a toll to phone across the street. This didn't mean that Hume shunned Saratoga entirely. He kept the Saratoga name on the prune boxes he shipped out from the ranch.

Among other ranch features was what very well may have been the first swimming pool in the Santa Clara Valley. Other accouterments included a blacksmith shop, brightly painted wagons with artistic lettering on them and a hose cart available if needed in the event of a fire.

In 1919, the San Jose realty firm of James A. Clayton & Co. purchased the property, continuing the ranch operation on a portion of it. Other parts were subdivided, continuing the operation already begun by George W. Hume. In my childhood and youth, Glen Una was referred simply as a district apart from Saratoga or Los Gatos. If you lived in Glen Una, your parents had plenty of money. Glen Una pupils at Saratoga Grammar School were known as the rich kids, although not all were in that bracket. One of my favorite memories was of a huge field that extended along the west side of Pepper Lane where airplanes landed.

I don't think there's even space enough for a helicopter now.