Down the Peninsula

The wedge-shaped strip of territory known to all San Franciscans as “the Peninsula,” broad at its base in the south and pinched to a tip by ocean and Bay at its northern end, is a multicolored land. It embraces tall mountains darkly forested, white sandy beaches enclosed on three sides by steep rocky cliffs, peaceful farms with chaste white buildings, broad walled estates with stately old mansions, and busy towns bright with red and green roofs of modern stucco homes. Spanish explorers and Catholic mission builders, trudging north from established Monterey, were the first white men to look on its hills and water and plain.

Crude ox teams and speeding mounted couriers packed the earth hard on the Peninsula's first trail, a trail that became a road and was named El Camino Real—the King's Highway. As San Francisco grew and spread across the Peninsula's northern tip the city's wealthy built palatial homes on the eastern slopes of the Coast mountains, near to the King's Highway, and drove thundering coachloads of famous guests to the lavish banquets they staged in mansions filled with objets d'art.

Today thousands of San Franciscans live on the Peninsula and drive to work or ride the commute trains playing never-ending games of bridge on tables held on knees between coach seats. On Sundays and holidays the many roads and highways that climb along mountain ridges, trace the ocean's shore, and skirt the southern regions of the Bay are black with the cars of picnickers and sightseers who flock to man-made lakes, crowd the barbecue stands, and drink beer in the cafes of tiny towns nestling in the shade against the mountain slopes.

Beyond the base of the Peninsula, sweeping away from the southern end of the Bay, lies the Santa Clara Valley, in springtime a red, pink, and white confusion of blossoms, for its broad rolling acres are an almost endless orchard of apricot and prune trees. And up the slopes that climb gradually toward the forested mountains to the west spread green vineyards. The valley is walled on east and west by mountains. The eastern hills are dotted with live-oak and laurel, and their slopes are green with thick-growing grass as winter changes to spring. Above the foothills rises Mount Hamilton, highest peak of the eastern range, whose crest in winter is sometimes whitened by snow. Redwoods, fir, maple, laurel, and madrone darken the western mountains, where twisting roads emerge at intervals from the thick forest upon sweeping views of deep canyons and distant blue ridges.

At the valley's southern end, some of the richest quicksilver mines in the world once operated, but the buildings are rotting now and the long shafts and tunnels, their length and depth increased by legend, are caving. The valley is rich in legends—and often the legends are substantiated by the crumbling adobe walls of a home built in the days of the ranchos or a weed-grown dirt road, abandoned, leading down into some narrow canyon.

Peninsula Tour

San Francisco—Burlingame—San Mateo—Redwood City—Palo Alto—Santa Clara—San Jose; 101.9 m. US 101.

Paved four-lane road throughout.
Southern Pacific R. R. parallels route; Pacific Greyhound Bus Line follows it.

US 101 follows “down the Peninsula’’ part of the most famous of all California roads, El Camino Real (The King's Highway), which from the eighteenth century has linked together the long line of missions and pueblos. Once little more than a trail, it has seen an ever-growing number of travelers until today, as a four-way arterial, it retains little more of the past than the musical names of its towns and cities.

South from Van Ness Ave. and Fulton St. in SAN FRANCISCO, 0 m., on Van Ness Ave. to Mission St.; R. on Mission (US 101).

DALY CITY, 6.7 m. (190 alt., 9,612 pop.), is at the crest of a hill from which the land, given over to vegetable gardens and golf courses, drops to Lake Merced and the ocean. San Bruno Mountain (1,375 alt.) rises steeply in the east. This was originally part of Rancho Laguna de la Merced. The earliest American settlers, homesteaders engaged in growing vegetables, were involved for several years in lawsuits growing out of attempts made by speculators to drive them off their land. Until the 1906 earthquake the northern part of the town site was a dairy ranch owned by John Daly. Many refugees from the great San Francisco fire, given small portable two-room houses, moved here, forming the nucleus of the thriving town. Today many of the residents work in San Francisco. Nurseries here grow violets, gladiolus, dahlias, and heather, all of which thrive on the cool summer fogs.

COLMA, 8 m., formerly a separate town, is now a district of Daly City.

At LAWNDALE, 8.4 m. (113 alt., 369 pop.), the quick are greatly outnumbered by the dead. Cemeteries extend into the hills from both sides of the highway. The beautifully landscaped acres, through which streams descend into Colma Creek, provide burial places for members of many nationalities and religious faiths. In GREEK ORTHODOX MEMORIAL PARK many of the tombstones bear photographs of the deceased developed in enamel and set into the stones. The JAPANESE CEMETERY has many graves marked according to Japanese custom by square wooden posts with pyramidal tops. Some of the vaults in the ITALIAN CEMETERY may be opened and the remains seen behind glass. In the SERBIAN CEMETERY many of the tombstones are in the form of the patriarchal cross common in the iconography of the Greek Orthodox Church. CYPRESS LAWN, largest and oldest of the interdenominational cemeteries, with beautifully kept lawns and clumps of pines and other trees, extends up sloping ground for nearly a mile. In HOLY CROSS, a large Roman Catholic cemetery, is an ornate stone chapel. At the entrance to the CHINESE CEMETERY, occupying a grassy slope overlooking the Bay, stands a shrine with two fireplaces in which the strips of paper carried in funeral processions still are burned.

In the willows along Baden Creek near BADEN, 11.7 m. (33 alt.), now a part of South San Francisco (see below), a tall Alsatian named Charles Lux met in 1857 an ambitious young German, Henry Kreicer. The latter had come to California on a non-transferable ticket belonging to a friend named Miller, whose name he adopted. With Lux he built up a cattle business which soon reached far beyond this part of Rancho Buri Buri. By 1880 Miller and Lux holdings spread over nineteen counties in California (chiefly in the Coast Ranges and the west side of the San Joaquin Valley) and San Francisco's meat business was under their control.

At the BADEN KENNEL CLUB (L), greyhounds once were raced. Since betting on races was illegal in California, the Greyhound Exchange resorted to the ingenious devise of selling “options” on the competing dogs. Before crowds of enthusiastic spectators, the dogs followed a realistic mechanical rabbit around a quarter-mile track. In 1939 the State Attorney General ordered all dog tracks in California closed.

TANFORAN RACE TRACK (gen. adm. 40¢; fall and spring seasons), 13 m., built in the 1880’s, attracted San Francisco horse-racing enthusiasts until the Legislature in 1912 made betting on races illegal. When the pari-mutuel system was legalized the track reopened. In 1913 the first flying in California was done here by Jean Poulhan. Crowds gasped in wonder at seeing him go several hundred feet aloft in his little plane.

South of Tanforan the highway is bordered by tall eucalyptus trees set out in the seventies and eighties by large landowners. They once extended in an almost unbroken line from here twenty miles south to Palo Alto.

Much of SAN BRUNO, 14.1 m. (20 alt., 6,496 pop.), lies east of the highway; extensive truck farms extend west to the hills. A small settlement was here before the American occupation, on part of the Sanchez family's Buri Buri Rancho, which extended some nine miles along the Bay shore and between two and three miles into the hills. When California passed into American hands the Sanchez family were among the few to make a heroic last stand. With a little band of compatriots they captured and held prisoners for several weeks Yerba Buena's alcalde, Washington Bartlett, and several other Americans. At the southern outskirts of San Bruno is “UNCLE TOM'S CABIN,” a restaurant formerly known as the Fourteen Mile House, whose barroom occupies one of the earliest hostelries on the “Mission Road,” a small cabin erected in 1849, to which later additions have been made.

Left from San Bruno on a paved road 0.8 m. to the junction with US 101 Bypass; R. (south) here 0.6 m. to the SAN FRANCISCO MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, one of the largest air terminals in the West. Its 1,376 acres were purchased from the Mills estate in 1927. Four hangars are here, and a large Spanish-styled administration building. Nearing completion is a seaplane base.

The main side route continues north on US 101 Bypass to SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, 2.8 m. (11 alt., 6,517 pop.), at the southern base of San Bruno Mountain. The site of “South City” occupies part of the “home ranch” of Miller and Lux (see above). Stockmen and meatpackers, among them Henry S. Crocker, P. D. Armour, G. P. Swift, and Henry Miller, invested here in 1889; later came steel mills, foundries, and manufacturing plants. The town has an attractive residential section with a view of the Bay, but many of the employees of the industrial plants live in San Francisco.

Like San Bruno, MILLBRAE, 15.9 m. (8 alt., 1,500 pop.), was until 1849 part of the Buri Buri Rancho. In that year Darius Ogden Mills, a Sacramento merchant and banker, acquired about 3,700 acres, a large part of which still belongs to his descendants. The streets and houses west of the highway are recent developments. The town has several large nurseries.

South of Millbrae US 101 traverses the MILLS ESTATE (private) 16.2 m., over which ranged large herds of dairy cattle. This was one of a number of large acreages in San Mateo County where wealthy families in the seventies and eighties made an attempt not altogether unsuccessful to duplicate English country life. With the great increase in the demand for suburban homes after 1906, most of the estates gradually were subdivided, but the fine private park and the dignified Victorian house of Darius Mills have remained unchanged.

BURLINGAME, 17 m. (30 alt., 15,897 pop.), lying along both sides of the highway, extending from the Bay shore to Buri Buri Ridge, is almost entirely a suburban residential community. Business is limited to two streets lined with small retail shops. The well-kept residential streets, the modern homes with trim lawns and gardens, a library with 60,000 volumes, the fine school buildings—all reflect a prosperous middle class. The town includes the northern part of Rancho San Mateo, granted to Cayento Arenas by Governor Pio Pico. In 1846 the land was sold for $25,000 to W. D. M. Howard. Emulating the Spanish predecessors, Howard built up a hide and tallow business, but unlike them, he grew wealthy with the growth of San Francisco. Burlingame's moderate climate and oak-covered hills early attracted a number of prosperous San Franciscans looking for country home sites, notably A. L. Easton, who in 1860 acquired property and settled in what is now North Burlingame. Easton and Howard were not the first to recognize the natural beauty of the land. Captain George Vancouver on his visit in 1792 had observed that “…it could only be compared to a park, which had been originally planted with the true old English oak… The soil was covered with luxuriant herbage and beautifully diversified with pleasing eminences and valleys; which with the range of lofty rugged mountains that bounded the prospect, required only to be adorned with the neat habitations of an industrious people…”

The community bears the name of Anson Burlingame. Son of a humble Methodist lay preacher, Burlingame had risen rapidly to become a Congressman from Massachusetts, and in 1861 Lincoln appointed him minister to China. His Burlingame Treaty made him an international figure, and his unfortunate plan for importation of coolie labor won him considerable prestige in California. In 1866, while enroute to China, he purchased 1,043 acres of land adjoining the Easton property. Though Burlingame died four years later, and had visited the place only once, when Burlingame Country Club was organized in 1893 it was named for him, as was the Burlingame Post Office a year later. “Blingum” was for years synonymous with wealth and fashion; but after the division of the Easton property in 1905, the population increased and the town took on its present suburban characteristics.

The SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY STATION, Burlingame Ave. and California Dr., in California mission style, is roofed with the old hand-made tiles from the mission hospice used by the Franciscans and early travelers as a stopping place halfway between Mission Dolores and Santa Clara.

Standing near a wide driveway, with a magnificent view of open country, semi-forested, rolling hills, and the distant Bay, is the MERCY HIGH SCHOOL, Adeline Dr. When it was the home of C. Frederick Kohl it was known as “The Oaks.” In Tudor style, it is of dark red brick trimmed with brown stone (Howard and White, architects). Little Lord Fauntleroy, starring Mary Pickford, was filmed here.

Between 18.4 m. and 18.6 m., El Camino Real is the eastern boundary of HILLSBOROUGH (40-700 alt., 2,745 pop.), which occupies an irregular, wedge-shaped area between Burlingame and San Mateo. It was separately incorporated in 1910 to keep out all business establishments. The town has no sidewalks; its homes, most of them set in grounds a half-acre or more in extent, are surrounded by high hedges. Along the winding roads are fine old shade trees.

The BURLINGAME COUNTRY CLUB (private), Floribunda Ave. in northern Hillsborough, was organized in 1893, the first country club in California and one of the first places in the United States where polo was played. Golf, too, was popular here at a time when but few Americans played the game.

The WOODLAND THEATRE, El Cerrito Ave., on ground sloping down toward San Mateo Creek, shaded by oaks, buckeyes, and bay trees, is used principally for concerts.

The informal Italian gardens of NEW PLACE (private), Stone-hedge Rd., residence of the late W. H. Crocker, were laid out by Bruce Porter; the Italian villa was designed by Lewis P. Hobart. In the house are notable nineteenth century paintings by Monet, Millet and Rousseau; some fine work by the Venetians: Bellini, Canaletto, and Guardi; and exquisite bronzes.

Extending from the Bay Shore to wooded hills, the quiet tree-shaded streets of suburban SAN MATEO, 19.8 m. (22 alt., 19,367 pop.), surround a bustling shopping district. Here on the banks of San Mateo Creek, where it emerges from a brushy canyon into the oak-covered plain, the Franciscan fathers built of adobe a small chapel and a hospice, for many years the only accommodation for the traveler between Santa Clara and Mission Dolores. As a part of Rancho San Mateo, the land became the property of W. D. M. Howard, who after the earthquake of 1868 saved the roofing tiles of the adobes (later used for the Burlingame railway station). Two pioneer merchants and bankers of San Francisco, Frederick Macondray and John Parrott, built country homes here in the 1850’s. In 1863 when the San Francisco-San Jose railroad was completed, streets were laid out to the east of the highway. The town grew slowly; its population in 1890 was only about one thousand. But as the large estates of Howard, Parrott, Alvinza Hayward, William Sharon, and other wealthy early settlers have been divided, large numbers of attractive homes have been built.

Wooded CITY PARK (ball park, tennis courts), facing El Camino Real between Fifth and Ninth Aves., was formerly the estate of Captain Kohl, an Alaska fur trader.

Set back of trees and lawns are ST. MATTHEW'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH and BAYLARD HOUSE, El Camino Real and Baldurn Ave. The setting of the buildings resembles that of an English village church. In the church is the tomb of the Howard family.

At the SAN MATEO-BURLINGAME POLO CLUB (adm. to games, 40¢), 1900 S. El Camino Real, two seasons of polo are held annually: spring, March and April, and fall, August to Christmas.

The $400,000 BAY MEADOWS RACETRACK (general adm. 40¢), on San Mateo's southern outskirts, shares the spring and fall crowds with Tanforan (see above). The plant, built in 1934 by a syndicate headed by one-time newsboy, William P. Kyne, accommodates about twenty-five thousand spectators. Standing track records here were set by Alviso, Seabiscuit, and Top Row.

1. Left from San Mateo on East Third Avenue 3.7 m. to the San Mateo Toll Bridge (car, driver, and four passengers, 65¢). Beyond the eastern end of the bridge is a junction with State 17 at Mount Eden, 13.6 m. (see East Bay Tour 2).

2. Right from San Mateo on West Third Avenue, which becomes Crystal Springs Road, to a junction with Sawyer Camp Road, 2.8 m.; R. here to a junction with State 5 (Skyline Boulevard), 3.7 m., on which the route goes L. over SKYLINE DAM, built across the deep canyon of San Mateo Creek to impound the water of CRYSTAL SPRINGS LAKE, a reservoir for San Francisco's water supply. The lake extends south for five miles, its lower end covering the site of the house of Domingo Feliz, grantee of the Rancho Feliz. Beneath the water is the site of Crystal Springs, around which grew the vineyards of Colonel Agaston Haraszthy, Hungarian nobleman, who had set out six varieties of wine grapes here by 1852.

At 5.3 m. is the junction with a paved road; L. here to the junction with Cañada Road, 1.2 m.; R. here to the WATER TEMPLE, 3.6 m., a circular structure inscribed: “I give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to my people.” This is the west end of the Hetch Hetchy pipe line. Cañada Road continues south through oak-covered hills to Woodside, 9.3 m. (see below).

The main side route goes R. on State 5 onto an earthen causeway across Crystal Springs Lake and climbs wooded slopes to the crest of Cahil Ridge at the junction with the Half Moon Bay Road, 8.3 m., where the main side route goes R. (straight ahead); L. here on State 5 over thickly forested hills to the junction with Kings Mountain Road, 7 m. (see below).

The main side route continues west from the junction with State 5 on the Half Moon Bay Road, twisting down Pilarcitos Creek Canyon to HALF MOON BAY, 13.6 m., (10 alt., 1,000 pop.), a town at the junction with State 1, center of the artichoke-growing Pilarcitos Valley. The original settlement, known as Spanishtown, grew around the adobes of Candelario Miramontes and Tiburcio Vasquez, grantees, respectively, of the local Rancho Miramontes and Rancho Corral de Tierra (enclosure of earth). Half Moon Bay was known during Prohibition for its conflicts between rum-runners and Coast Guard. A submerged reef extending south for two miles from nearby Pillar Point forms a breakwater for the harbor and protects the arc-shaped white sandy beach.

The Nation's commercial production of globe artichokes is confined largely to the coastal strip between Half Moon Bay and Monterey Bay, where the cool foggy summers and mild wet winters make growing conditions ideal. Though widely used in France and Italy, artichokes are not a staple article of food in the United States outside California. They are on the San Francisco market almost all seasons, but the greater part of the crop is cut from January to April. Canning (first done in 1917) provides an outlet for the less marketable small-sized artichokes, the canned product consisting only of hearts.

South of Half Moon Bay the route skirts the coast on State 1 to PURISIMA (immaculate), 18.1 m. (46 alt., 50 pop.), a bleak and decaying old town on a hill above Purisima Creek, which served as the northern boundary of Rancho Cañada de Verde y Arroyo de la Purisima (valley of verdure and creek of the immaculate one), granted to Jose Maria Alviso in 1838.

Once a lumbering town, SAN GREGORIO, 26 m. (100 alt., 75 pop.), lies beside San Gregorio Creek, which drains the vast acreage of the former Rancho San Gregorio, granted to Antonio Buelna. Reaching here on October 24, 1769, Portola camped two days to rest his men, all of them weary and many ill of scurvy. The frame SAN GREGORIO HOUSE, painted a rusty red and half-hidden by tall maples, was once a popular resort.

PESCADERO (fishmonger), 33.4 m., (56 alt., 979 pop.), standing in the flat valley about three miles from the ocean, is within the boundaries of Rancho El Pescadero, granted in 1833 to soldier Juan Jose Gonzales, whose adobe stood on the north bank of Pescadero Creek. Father Crespi, the historian of Portola's party, proposed the founding of a mission near the beach, where an Indian village stood. Pescadero was known as Spotless Town for many years after the ship Colombia ran ashore here and was battered to pieces, for the residents—nearly all of whom were New Englanders—salvaged the cargo of white lead and painted their houses gleaming white.

At Pescadero is the junction with Blooms Mill Creek Road (see below).

At LAKE LUCERNE, 38.6 m., sometimes known as Bean Hollow Lagoon, a salt-water lake lying at the mouth of the Arroyo de los Frijoles (Bean Hollow), is the junction with Pebble Beach Road; R. here along the shoreline past Pescadero Point, 2.6 m., to mile-long PEBBLE BEACH (surf fishing). The deposit of pebbles here includes agates and chalcedony, from amygdaloid rocks, made popular by San Francisco jewelers in the eighties. Here stand the ruins of “COBURN'S FOLLY,” the large three-story hotel erected by Loren Coburn in 1892. He spent money lavishly, expecting to have a popular and profitable resort upon the arrival of the proposed Ocean Shore Railroad from San Francisco. The railroad's failure to build this far south left Coburn possessor of a vacant and useless building. He closed the road to the beach, thus bringing on a long series of quarrels with the citizens of nearby Pescadero (see above). Barriers which he built across the road were destroyed again and again. Lawsuits followed, and Coburn, who was eventually awarded damages against his fellow citizens for $1,000, became a hated and ostracised old man.

PIGEON POINT, 41.3 m., was named for the clipper ship (Carrier pigeon), wrecked here May 6, 1853. A Portuguese whaling station once was here, and from the pier, lumber and dairy products were shipped. The high cliff is topped by the white conical tower of PIGEON POINT LIGHTHOUSE, 148 feet above water level, built in 1872. Its 900,000-candlepower beam is visible for eighteen miles.

Whitehouse Creek, 10.3 m., is named for ISAAC GRAHAM'S HOUSE (private), a lone white, two-story frame dwelling brought around the Horn, for many years a landmark for mariners but now almost hidden by a grove of eucalyptus trees. FRANKLIN POINT, a mile west, commemorates a sea disaster in 1865 when eleven were lost in the wreck of the Sir John Franklin.

LA PUNTA DEL AÑO NUEVO (New Year's Point), 49 m., sighted and named by Sebastian Vizcaino on January 3, 1603, is crowned by the white tower of NEW YEAR'S POINT LIGHTHOUSE. Along the shore here the shifting sand frequently reveals evidence of former Indian occupation in the form of arrowheads, skeletons, and shells. The vast and fertile Rancho Punta del Año Nuevo once covered 17,753 acres north from the point. From grantee Simeon Castro the rancho passed into the hands of Loren Coburn, who leased the land to dairy farmers (see above).

South of San Mateo the highway climbs the lower slopes of rounded, oak-covered hills—once on Rancho Las Pulgas—which hem in the little valley originally called Cañada del Diablo.

BELMONT, 24.2 m. (32 at., 984 pop.) is a town of suburban residences, schools, and sanitariums. In the early fifties, when it was for a short time the county seat, a hotel here was a stopping place for stages.

The former rambling white mansion of William C. Ralston is now one of the buildings of NOTRE DAME COLLEGE, Ralston. Ave. In 1854 Count Leonetto Cipriani, an Italian political refugee, acquired the site, Cañada del Diablo (Devil's Valley), and built a small villa, which in 1866 he sold to Ralston. The financier began transforming it into an extravagant show place, adorned with parquetry floors, mirror-panelled walls, and chandeliers. He built greenhouses, a gymnasium with a Turkish bath, stables panelled in carved mahogany, a gas-works to provide gas for illumination and a dam and reservoir to provide water. After Ralston's death in 1875 the big house was successively a private school and a hospital. In 1923 it was occupied by the Sisters of Notre Dame, who removed their convent and college here from San Jose. The mansion is now called Berchman's Hall, honoring one of the founding sisters. Ralston's famous ballroom is the school chapel.

US 101 continues south through country largely devoted to flower growing. Chrysanthemums, the most important crop, have an annual value of about $5,000,000. The growers are usually Chinese, Japanese, or Italians. From here each year on All Saints Day, New Orleans gets thousands of white chrysanthemums for its graves.

Named for the first vessel to enter the Golden Gate, SAN CARLOS, 25.1 m. (21 alt., 3,508 pop.), occupies a site within the former boundaries of Rancho Las Pulgas (the fleas), which got its unhappy name from the innumerable fleas infesting the Indian village that stood here. Today it is a pleasant residential town without any remains of the past either in the form of insects or old buildings.

REDWOOD CITY, 27.1 m. (10 alt., 12,364 pop.), seat of San Mateo County, was known in Spanish-American days as the Embarcadero because of the slough which was navigable up to what is now the center of the business district. Other names given it were Cachinetac and Mezesville, for S. M. Mezes, who laid out the town in 1854. Shortly after the Gold Rush the fine stands of redwoods nearby attracted lumbermen, who shipped the timber down Redwood Slough. A number of schooners built here carried lumber, hay, and grain to San Francisco. The town has grown rapidly since 1920, but many old frame houses of the fifties and sixties are still standing. A cement works and two tanneries are the largest industrial plants.

Facing Broadway at Hamilton St. is the SAN MATEO COUNTY COURTHOUSE, a resolutely modern building built in 1939, which contrasts incongruously with its neighbor, the former courthouse, an old domed building of Colusa sandstone. The PUBLIC LIBRARY and CITY HALL, Jefferson Ave. and Middlefield Rd., are a well-proportioned group of buildings employing concrete with red-tiled roofs in a severe modern style.

The two-story, square, stuccoed MORGAN HOUSE was moved to Chestnut and Spring Sts. from the tidal lands of the Bay, where it had served as a residence, anchored on piles, for Captain John Stillwell Morgan, promoter of oyster culture in San Francisco Bay.

1. Left from Redwood City on a paved road 3.1 m. to the PORT OF REDWOOD CITY, completed in 1937. The channel has been dredged to accommodate ocean-going vessels. Large shipments are made of fresh and canned fruit and vegetables. Lumber, once the chief export, is now the chief import.

The PACIFIC PORTLAND CEMENT PLANT (R), 3.2 m., utilizes the oyster shells that bed the bottom of the shallow mud flats; dredged from the Bay, pulverized, and calcined, they are converted into lime.

2. Right from Redwood City on Jefferson Ave. 2.1 m. to EMERALD LAKE AND BOWL, in a nine-acre park. A natural bowl seats 12,000 at Christmas and Easter celebrations.

3. Right from the southern end of Redwood City at Five Points on paved Woodside Road is WOODSIDE, 3.9 m. (486 alt., 400 pop.), at the southern end of San Raymundo Valley, first settled in the 1830’s by William (“Bill the Sawyer”) Smith and his partner James Pease, deserter from a British ship, who made carts and farming implements for the padres at Santa Clara. Woodside now represents the combined old settlements of Greersburg and Whiskey Hill, where flourished three saloons.

Left from Woodside on Portola Road, past large country houses set well back of hedges and gardens, to the junction with a paved road, 2.1 m.; R. here 0.2 m. to the junction with a dirt road; R. here to the HOOPER ADOBE (private), 0.3 m., built by Charles Brown, an American who deserted a whaling vessel in 1833, acquired part of Rancho Cañada de Raymundo, and settled here. Later Colonel “Jack” Hays used the building as a lodging house for lumbermen. Other owners have been E. W. Burr and John A. Hooper, president of the San Francisco National Bank. Two tall eucalyptus trees and a trim hedge frame the one-story house with its tiled roof extending over the veranda. An enormous Banksia rosebush climbs to the ridge of the roof.

On Portola Road at 2.3 m. is SEARSVILLE LAKE (swimming, boating; adm. week-days 25¢ Sun. and holidays 35¢). Near here in the fifties was Searsville, with 2,000 inhabitants, a busy center for redwood lumbering and convenient stopping place for mule- and ox-team drivers crossing the ridge. Only reminder of its lusty days are the rows of trees which shaded its main street. In 1890, when the supply of timber was exhausted, the Spring Valley Water Company removed the buildings and built a dam which forms the present lake. It is now a reservoir whose waters irrigate the greenery of the Stanford University campus (see below).

The main side route goes west from Woodside on La Honda Road.

At the junction with Kings Mountain Road, 4.7 m., under a large oak, is the JOHN COPPINGER STOREHOUSE, now used as a residence, built in 1854 of hand-hewn timbers by Coppinger, grantee of 12,545-acre Rancho Cañada de Raymundo. The two curious dormer windows of its upper story are slightly awry. Coppinger, who married Maria Luisa Soto, member of an influential Spanish family, built an adobe house here in 1840 which stood until destroyed by the 1906 earthquake.

The route turns R. on Kings Mountain Road to the WOODSIDE STORE, 5.2 m., a two-story shingled structure shaded by a large live oak. Built in 1854 by R. O. Tripp, a dentist, the store (now a library) was the trading center for fifteen sawmills. More than a thousand lumberjacks got their mail, food, and liquor here. Hand-hewn, octagonal posts support the porch roof; the joists also are hand-hewn. “Old Doc” Tripp at ninety-three still presided behind his counter.

At 5.8 m. Kings Mountain Road enters wooded HUDDART PARK, a 973-acre undeveloped recreational area bequeathed to San Francisco by James M. Huddart in 1931. The sharply winding road climbs into the wooded canyon to a junction with State 5 (Skyline Boulevard), 9.2 m. (see above), at the summit of Cahil Ridge, also known as Kings Mountain for a Mrs. Honoria King who formerly kept a tavern accommodating travelers by stage over the toll road from Woodside. The route goes L. on State 5.

At 11 m. is OBSERVATION POINT, a stone-buttressed parking lot area offering a superb view of the Peninsula towns, San Francisco Bay, and the East Bay shore. Mount Tamalpais, Mount Hamilton, and Mount Diablo are clearly visible.

Near the summit of Sierra Morena (2,400 alt.) at 11.6 m. is the SKYLINE METHUSELAH REDWOOD (L), an ancient lone redwood with storm-shattered top, fifty-five feet in circumference.

State 5 drops by well-engineered grades to a junction, at 14.2 m., with La Honda Road, on which the route goes R.; L. here on State 5 to Saratoga Gap, at the junction with State 9, 13.9 m. (see below).

The route goes R. on La Honda Road through dense firs and redwoods into the deep canyon of La Honda Creek. LA HONDA (the deep), 20 m. (403 alt., 150 pop.) (hotel, cabins, campgrounds), was founded in 1861 by John L. Sears of Searsville. The LA HONDA STORE was built for Sears by Jim and Bob Younger, who a little later were arrested as members of the Jesse James gang.

At LA HONDA PARK (campgrounds, swimming), 20.5 m., a summer resort, is a junction with a paved road; the route turns L. here on Alpine Creek Road into a densely wooded canyon to the junction with Blooms Mill Road, 22 m.; R. on Blooms Mill Road to SAN MATEO COUNTY MEMORIAL PARK (camping 50¢; special weekly rates), 26.5 m. a 310-acre grove of redwoods dedicated to the memory of those from San Mateo County who died in the World War.

Blooms Mill Road winds down Pescadero Creek to PESCADERO, 34.5 m. (56 alt., 979 pop.), at the junction with State 1 (see above).

South of Redwood City the Bay narrows and the level land between the highway and the mountains widens. The country originally had great natural beauty, but the section facing the highway has been so defaced by real estate offices, sandwich stands, and billboards that Bay region drivers have petulantly echoed Ogden Nash's couplet:

“I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree;

Perhaps, unless the billboard fall, I shall not see a tree at all.”

ATHERTON, 29.1 m. (52 alt., 1,324 pop.), bears the name of Faxon D. Atherton, a pioneer settler, whose daughter-in-law, Gertrude Atherton, in her autobiography, Adventures of a Novelist, recounts much interesting gossip of fashionable life here in the 1880’s. Atherton has remained a residential community, its roads winding in and out among tree-lined estates. The MENLO CIRCUS CLUB, Isabella Ave., occupies part of the site of Valparaiso Park, the estate of Faxon Atherton. At the club's annual (August) horse show fine horses from many parts of the country compete for prizes.

MENLO PARK, 30.1 m. (63 alt., 2,254 pop.), was named in 1851 for Ireland's Menlo Park by Dennis J. Oliver and D. C. McGlyn, who had purchased 1,700 acres of the Rancho Las Pulgas. The town grew up after the opening of the San Francisco-San Jose railroad in 1863, attracting many people of wealth. More recently families of moderate means have settled here, but except for nurseries and local retail shops Menlo Park has no commercial activities.

1. Left from Menlo Park on Ravenswood Ave. 0.2 m. to the PARK MILITARY ACADEMY, occupying a large old-fashioned house surrounded by oak trees. This was formerly the home of Edgar Mills, brother of Darious Ogden Mills.

The square-towered TIMOTHY HOPKINS HOUSE, 0.3 m., stands a quarter-mile south of the road in a grove of fine oaks. In the fifties, this property belonged to E. W. Barron of quicksilver fame. It later passed to Senator Milton S. Latham, but the home built by Barron burned before Latham and his bride could move into it. Latham built the present house, which he named “Sherwood Hall.” From him it passed to Mary Hopkins, widow of Mark Hopkins, and from her to Timothy Hopkins, one of the original trustees of Stanford University.

At 0.6 is a junction with Middlefield Road; the route goes R. here.

In 1898 ST. PATRICK'S SEMINARY, 0.9 m., an institution of collegiate rank, was founded by the late Archbishop Thomas Riordan to train men for the Roman Catholic priesthood. The instructors are members of the Order of St. Sulpice; resident seminarians number more than one hundred. The buildings stand well back from the road in a setting of green lawns, great oaks, palms and rose gardens.

At 1.3 m. is the junction with Willow Road; L. on Willow Road.

The VETERANS’ ADMINISTRATION HOSPITAL, 2.1 m., is a diagnostic center with 900 patients. The buildings stand on attractive wooded grounds.

On Willow Road at 2.4 m. is the junction with US 101 Bypass; straight ahead on Willow Rd. to DUMBARTON BRIDGE (40¢ per car, 5¢ per passenger), 4.7 m.

Visible south of Dumbarton Bridge is the BAY CROSSING OF THE HETCH-HETCHY AQUEDUCTS. Underneath the navigable channel on the east side of the Bay, the steel cylinder and reinforced concrete pipes are entrenched twenty-five feet down in the mud, seventy feet beneath the surface of the water. On the shallower western side of the Bay, the submerged pipes enter a concrete caisson and from there are carried to the San Mateo County shore over a steel bridge resting on concrete piers (see Emporium of a New World: Engineering Enterprise).

At 13.4 m. is the junction with State 17 (see East Bay Tour 2) .

2. Right from Menlo Park on Cambridge Avenue 0.7 m. to the ALLIED ARTS GUILD (open weekdays 9-5:30) an institution organized in 1930 to help finance the Stanford Convalescent Home for Children in Palo Alto. The guild maintains a tea room and a group of studios which display weaving, ceramics, metal- and wood-craft, and block printing. These are housed in a group of buildings admirably designed in seventeenth-century Spanish Colonial style by Gardiner Bailey on land owned originally by John and Margaret Murray, who came here in 1854. The estate's great charm is enhanced by the beautifully appropriate landscaping of the gardens.

Where US 101 crosses San Francisquito Creek, 31.3 m., appears a few hundred feet west, near its bank, the solitary redwood, PALO ALTO (tall tree), a landmark for explorers and travelers since the Gaspar de Portola expedition first saw it in 1769. It was not a tree of remarkable height among redwoods, but standing far removed from any others, it towered above its neighboring oaks, visible for many leagues. It appears in early prints and on the seal of Stanford University as a double-trunked tree; one section has fallen.

US 101 divides Stanford University from the city of PALO ALTO, 31.9 m. (63 alt., 16,278 pop.), itself bisected by its chief thoroughfare, University Avenue. When the university came into being in 1891, the greater part of what is now Palo Alto was but a great wheat field dotted with oak trees and a few scattered houses and stores; early students and instructors went to Menlo Park for their mail and food supplies. But by 1894 Palo Alto was large enough to incorporate. Mayfield, now a Palo Alto suburb, once was a separate unregenerate town where Stanford students could drink beer. Industry too has come, in the form of a company making automatic hammers.

The Palo Alto PUBLIC LIBRARY, Hamilton Ave. and Bryant St., has 65,000 volumes and much important material on local history—files of newspapers, old theater and concert programs, and old photo graphs.

Examples of an intelligent adaptation of the Spanish Colonial style to modern use are the POST OFFICE, Waverly St. and Hamilton Ave.; the CITY HALL, Ramona St. between University and Lytton Aves.; and the PALO ALTO HIGH SCHOOL, El Camino Real and Embarcadero Rd. The same style has been used succesfully on a business block (Ramona St. between University and Hamilton Aves.), where the buildings were designed so they would not destroy a large oak tree

The COMMUNITY CENTER, Melville Ave. and Middlefield Rd., consists of a group of buildings in Spanish Colonial style admirably placed about three sides of a brick paved court and surrounded by splendid oaks and broad lawns. The buildings were a gift of Mrs. Louis Stern. The Center's activities are supported partly by the city and partly by the organizations using the center. The Palo Alto Community Players give performances in the theater, the central building in the group. Here also are a separate children's theater, a children's museum, Boy Scouts Hall, a ballroom, a reception room, and a dining room and kitchen, all designed to foster Palo Alto community spirit.

The junction of US 101 with University Avenue and Palm Drive marks the entrance (R) to the campus of STANFORD UNIVERSITY, founded by Senator and Mrs. Leland Stanford as a memorial to their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died at the age of sixteen. The cornerstone of the first building was laid in 1887; the university was opened in the autumn of 1891. Stanford began not only with a great endowment and a fine group of buildings, but with distinguished faculty members, including Vernon L. Kellogg, Theodore Hoover, Henry R. Fairclough, Robert Eckles Swain, Melville Best Anderson, and Lewis M. Terman. Among its early alumni are Charles K. “Cheerio” Field, Whitelaw Reed, Dane Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, H. L. Davis, Will and Wallace Irwin, Holbrook Blinn, Homer Lea, and Ray Lyman Wilbur. It always has been coeducational. Until 1933 women students were limited to 500; since then the number has been limited to approximately 40 percent of the total enrollment. In 1938-39 there were 4,554 students and 691 faculty members.

The heavy sandstone piers flanking the entrance have taken the place of the low Romanesque towers, pierced by heavy round-headed arches with open pier arcades on each side, which were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. The great memorial arch, beyond which rose the fine central tower of the Memorial Church—both pivotal features of the unified architectural scheme—also was destroyed.

Right from US 101 on Palm Drive, bordered by shrubs and trees from many parts of the world in a 600-acre arboretum, 0.1 m. to the junction with a paved road; R. here 0.2 m. to PALO ALTO HOSPITAL, a fine modern institution owned by the City of Palo Alto and operated by the university.

On Palm Drive at 0.6 m. is the junction with Pine Avenue.

1. Right here 0.1 m. to the STANFORD MAUSOLEUM, built of white granite in the form of a Greek temple. The entrance is flanked by marble sphinxes; polished Ionic columns support the architrave. Nearby (R) is the TOMB OF HENRY J. LATHROP, Mrs. Stanford's brother, surmounted by a white marble figure called the Angel of Grief. The route follows a winding drive (L) from the mausoleum, past the CACTUS GARDEN, which contains a great variety of desert plants. It continues to the TROUTMERE GUERNSEY FARM, 0.7 m. In the large brick barn where Senator Stanford's famous thoroughbreds once were stabled are dairy cattle.

2. Left on Pine Avenue 0.3 m. to the junction with Galvez Street; L. here past the campus tennis courts, football and baseball fields, and track oval 0.3 m. to the STADIUM, seating 89,000, where the Stanford-California football game—northern California's “Big Game”—takes place on alternate years.

Pine Avenue continues past ENCINA GYMNASIUM, men's athletic center, to the junction with Arguello Street, 0.4 m.; R. here past ENCINA HALL (R), 0.6 m. largest of the men's dormitories. Adjoining (L) are two others—TOYON HALL and BRANNER HALL, both in simple Spanish Colonial style. Neither men nor women students may live in fraternity or sorority houses until they have completed the freshman year. About three hundred older students not members of fraternities belong to cooperative eating clubs. One large cooperative organization buys for the entire group. The cost to each student is about $50 a quarter.

The main side route follows Palm Drive south from its junction with Pine Avenue to the junction with a paved road, 0.7 m.; R. here 0.1 m. to the LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR MUSEUM (open daily 10-5; adm. 25¢), a large neoclassic structure built of yellow sandstone. At the entrance doors are four tall Ionic columns; on each side the facade is ornamented with large mosaics. Nucleus of the museum is the collection made by Leland Stanford, Jr., between 1880 and 1884, including Egyptian bronzes, Tanagra figurines, Greek and Roman glass, armor, mosaics, Sèvres and Dresden ware. In Stanford Memorial Room are collections of personal belongings of the founders of the University, views of its buildings in construction, and details of the mosaics used in the Memorial Church. Another room contains the “Governor Stanford,” the first locomotive used on the Central Pacific Railroad (1863), and cases of items related to early California history—among them practically all the implements extant of San Francisco's Mission Dolores.

Also housed in the museum are the Di Cesnola collection of Greek and Roman pottery and glass from the island of Cyprus; Indian mound relics and artifacts; rare art materials from the Orient (the Ikeda Chinese and Japanese Collection); and Chinese and Japanese objets d'art, including the well-known De Long Collection of Japanese rarities. Among the rare objects in the Egyptian Room is a collection of Babylonian tablets.

Palm Drive continues south to the junction with a paved road; L. here 0.1 m. to the LAURENCE FROST AMPHITHEATRE, a sunken oval seating 8,000, presented by Mr. and Mrs. Howard Frost as a memorial to their son. The approach is through a tree-lined walk. The tiers of seats are placed along terraces of turf, closely cut and beautifully green. Commencement exercises are held here.

Adjoining on the south (R) is the center of Stanford's dramatic activities, MEMORIAL HALL, completed in 1937 at a cost of $600,000. The main theater seats 1,700; the rehearsal theater, 197. Among the University Theater's productions have been Sophocles’ Antigone (1903), Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (1938), and The Vikings in Helgoland (1938).

Around a large oval planted to lawn and shrubs, dividing Palm Drive into two roadways, the route curves to the junction with Serra Street, 0.9 m., at the foot of Palm Drive, beyond which extends the Outer Quadrangle (see below); R. on Serra Street 0.2 m. to SEQUOIA HALL, oldest of the men's dormitories and traditional abode of the Stanford “rough,” non-fraternity man of uncurbed spirit.

Heart of the campus is the group of buildings known as the OUTER QUADRANGLE (length 894 feet, width 760 feet). At the northern end of the enclosure, formed by fourteen buildings housing lecture halls and administrative offices with open arcades on the outside, stand the ADMINISTRATION BUILDING (L) and JORDAN HALL (R). Between the two a passage leads to the INNER QUADRANGLE, formed by twelve one-story buildings and the Memorial Church (see below)—all connected by a continuous arcade. The red tile roof, the open arches, the long colonnades resembling cloister walks are reminiscent of the California missions, but the work in its essential features is Romanesque, the architect—Charles Allerton Coolidge of Boston—having been a disciple of Richardson. The buff sandstone of rough-faced ashlar used in these, the first buildings to be erected, came from a quarry twelve miles south of San Jose. Both architecturally and academically the two “quads” are the heart of the university. In addition to the original group of buildings there are many newer buildings on streets radiating from here.

The STANFORD MEMORIAL CHURCH (open daily; services Sun. 11 and 4., also 7:30 p.m during summer quarter; organ recitals precede services), faces the cloistered inner quadrangle from the south. Set in the pavement before the entrance are a series of brass tablets, a new one being added for each graduating class. Built by Mrs. Leland Stanford as a memorial to her husband, the church was almost completely ruined by the 1906 earthquake. Rebuilt without its former central tower, the present structure is less graceful than the original. The mosaics of the facade, like those destroyed, were made in Venice; they follow largely the original design. In the spandrils above the triple doorways with their Romanesque piers and carved arches, the mosaics represent figures symbolic of the theological virtues. A large round-headed window fills the central space above the doorways; at each side are three smaller windows. The space above and between this fenestration up to the apex of the roof is filled with a huge mosaic, The Sermon on the Mount, against a background of gold.

The mosaic decoration in the vestibule consists of colored medallions in the form of the Chi Rho and the Alpha and Omega against a gold background. The same buff sandstone used for the exterior has been used for the interior walls and piers. The interior is a nave of four bays with narrow aisles, each with a single large round-headed window. The clerestory has two small windows to each bay. The transepts have apsidal endings and balconies, each with a semicircular carved balustrade supported by heavy Romanesque piers. From the crossing, with its four massive arches, seven white marble steps rise the entire width to a shallow choir. The sanctuary rail is of marble. The apse is semicircular with fourteen small recessed arches faced with gold mosaic and three large windows in the upper story. Above the marble altar is a reproduction in mosaic of Cosimo Rosselli's The Last Supper. The mosaics which cover the upper walls of the entire interior depict Biblical scenes and individual figures of prophets, patriarchs, and saints. The work lost in the earthquake was replaced from the studios of Antonio Salvati in Venice, where the original designs had fortunately been preserved.

The route goes L. on Serra Street from the foot of Palm Drive to the junction with Lasuen Street, 1 m., and R. on Lasuen Street.

The Romanesque THOMAS WELTON STANFORD ART GALLERY (L), built in 1917, gift of a brother of Senator Stanford, has a small permanent collection of the work of nineteenth-century American artists. Like the buildings adjoining on the south (see below), it is a unit in a projected new quadrangle, one of two planned to flank the present Outer Quandrangle (see above), on the east and west.

The facade of the LIBRARY (L), 1.1 m., built in 1919, is adorned with stone figures carved by Edgar Walter. Its 675,000 volumes include the Hopkins Railway Library presented by Timothy Hopkins in 1892, the 5,000-volume Hildebrand Library of Germanic philology and literature, the Jarboe collection of literature of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era, the Thomas Welton Stanford Australasian Library of early travels and voyages, and the Flugel collection including works of rare fifteenth- sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY AND VICINITY

“Legend”

  1. Arboretum

  2. Palo Alto Hospital

  3. Stanford Mausoleum

  4. Cactus Garden

  5. Troutmere Guernsey Farm

  6. Leland Stanford Junior Museum

  7. Administration Building

  8. Jordan Hall

  9. Inner Quadrangle

10. Stanford Memorial Church

11. Sequoia Hall

12. U. S. Department of Agriculture Experimental Station

13. Roble Hall

14. Lagunita Court

15. Women's Gymnasium

16. Stanford Union

17. Cubberly Building

18. Library

19. Art Gallery

20. Memorial Hall

21. Laurence Frost Amphitheater

22. Encina Gymnasium

23. Athletic Field

24. Stanford Bowl

25. Encina Hall

26. Toyon Hall

27. Branner Hall

28. Residence of the University President

29. Lagunita

30. Golf Course

31. Stanford Stables

32. Carnegie Institute Laboratory

Surmounted by a fourteen-floor, 280-foot tower, the adjoining HOOVER LIBRARY FOR WAR, PEACE, AND REVOLUTION, a concrete and steel structure built in 1940 (Bakewell, Weihe, and Brown, architects), houses ex-President Herbert Hoover's collection of 150,000 printed and manuscript items dealing with the World War and its aftermath.

Named for Ellwood P. Cubberley, professor of education, the CUBBERLEY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION BUILDING (L), 1.2 m., is headquarters for students of education.

The STANFORD UNION (R), 1.3 m., is a clubhouse for men built largely through the efforts of Herbert Hoover of the class of 1895. Informal “bull sessions” have for years been held in the “cellar,” a small downstairs cafeteria.

At 1.3 m. on Lasuen Street is the junction with Santa Teresa Street; R. here to the junction with Lomita Drive, 1.5 m., where the main side route turns L. on Lomita Drive; straight ahead from this junction on Santa Teresa Street to the two principal women's dormitories: ROBLE HALL (L), 0.1 m., a large vine-covered building, and LAGUNITA COURT (L), 0.2 m., a group of houses set among lawns and trees. Flanked by a swimming pool, tennis courts, and golf and hockey fields, the WOMEN'S GYMNASIUM across the street (R) is a simplified adaptation of the Spanish Colonial style in buff-colored concrete.

The main side route goes L. from the junction with Santa Teresa Street on Lomita Drive.

LAGUNITA (little lake) (R), 1.6 m. a dry lake bed throughout much of the year, is used for water sports after winter rains fill it with a shallow expanse of water.

The RESIDENCE OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT (R), 1.8 m. is a large Colonial-style house. Stanford has had but three presidents. The first, David Starr Jordan, selected by Senator and Mrs. Stanford in 1891, guided the institution through some difficult early years when, after Senator Stanford's death, the estate became involved in litigation. After Jordan's retirement in 1913, Dr. John C. Branner was president for three years. Branner was succeeded by Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur.

At 2.2 m. is the junction with Mayfield Avenue, on which the main side route turns R.; L. here on Mayfield Avenue 0.1 m. to the junction with Santa Ynez Street; R. on Santa Ynez Street to the junction with Mirada Street, 0.5 m.; L. on Mirada Street to the RESIDENCE OF HERBERT HOOVER (private) (L), 0.6 m. (623 Mirada St.), overlooking the campus. The ex-President, a graduate of Stanford's first class, was once a faculty member.

The main side route goes R. (west) on Mayfield Avenue, which at 2.3 m. unites with Junipero Serra Boulevard. At 3.3 m. is the junction with a gravelled road, on which the route turns R.

At the STANFORD STABLES (R), 3.4 m. Leland Stanford established his stock farm in 1876. On the base of a monument to a famous trotter are inscribed a list of names and records of Stanford's best horses. A tablet commemorates the pre-Edison motion picture experiment conducted here in 1878 in connection with horse racing. By means of a battery of cameras fitted with electric shutters, men and animals were portrayed in motion.

At 3.8 m. is the junction with Searsville Road, on which the route turns R.

The CARNEGIE INSTITUTE LABORATORY (L), 4 m. was organized in 1921 for the purpose of studying the production, distribution, and consumption of food. The Carnegie Corporation endowed the laboratory in 1932.

At 33.2 m. on US 101 is the junction with Stanford Avenue.

Right on Stanford Avenue 0.5 m. to the PETER COUTTS COTTAGE (L), standing beside a plain two-story brick library and office building. Both structures were built in the seventies by Paulin Caperon, political fugitive from France who reached America on the passport of Peter Coutts, his cousin. Caperon bought the Matadero Ranch (later purchased by Governor Stanford), and here he developed orchards and vineyards, tunneling the hillside for a water supply. A racetrack for his thoroughbreds was laid out near the present corner of Stanford Avenue and US 101. Caperon and his family returned to Europe in 1880. Young Dr. David Starr Jordan (see above) occupied the cottage in 1891. Subsequently the buildings have housed university departments and faculty members.

At 0.8 m. is the junction with Stanford Avenue Extension; L. here to the HARRIS J. RYAN HIGH VOLTAGE LABORATORY (L), 1.2 m., where university scientists carry on electrical experiments with equpiment which includes transformers of more than 2,000,000-volt capacity.

South of Palo Alto, US 101 enters the great orchard region of the Santa Clara Valley, where more than one hundred and twenty thousand acres are planted to deciduous fruits. Early in the mission period the Franciscans found that both the vine and fruit trees did well in California, but no extensive planting of fruit trees was made until about 1856, when Louis Pellier brought from southwestern France a number of prune scions. To him and to nurserymen goes the credit for the beginning of a great industry. In 1939 there were more than seventy thousand acres in prunes alone. Second in importance of the valley's products is the apricot, to which about twenty thousand acres have been planted in belts relatively free from frost. The variety most grown is the Moor Park. Pears are planted to more than six thousand acres.

Early American settlers in the valley discovered an artesian zone north and west of San Jose which provided ample water for irrigation. Since 1915 the increased pumping draft and the decrease in average rainfall have lowered the ground water level nearly one hundred feet. Some one hundred thousand acres affected by this gradual depletion today are under irrigation.

At 36.7 m. is a junction with San Antonio Ave.

Right on San Antonio Avenue is LOS ALTOS, 2.8 m. (200 alt., 2,000 pop.), a town of fine houses and gardens on land once a part of Rancho San Antonio.

Surrounded by orchards and truck gardens is MOUNTAIN VIEW, 37.7 m. (67 alt., 3,897 pop.). Here are canneries, planing mills, and a plant for pre-cooling berries and fruits before shipment to Eastern markets. Mountain View's Pacific Press Publishing Association, one of the largest presses in the West, is operated by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

The site of old Mountain View lies nearly a mile south. Before the building of the railroad, a large hotel here was a stopping place for the daily San Francisco-San Jose stage and a meeting place for settlers from scattered grain and stock ranches. A few old-timers remember with regret the fine quail, pigeon, and duck shooting they enjoyed before the land was planted to orchards.

At 38.5 m. is a junction with paved Alviso Road.

Left on Alviso Road 2.3 m. to the junction with US 101 Bypass. Stretching northeastward are the 1,000 acres of MOFFETT FIELD (usually open 9-5; no cameras), formerly a Navy airbase, today the field of two Army air squadrons. The great hangar, a landmark for miles around, is 1,133 feet long, 308 feet wide, and its height of 193 feet is that of an eighteen-story building. It was the home of the dirigibles Akron and Macon, both of which met with tragic accidents. Under construction in 1940 was a $10,000,000 AERONAUTICAL RESEARCH LABORATORY which, under the authority of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, will be a sister station to one at Langley Field, Virginia, and will conduct research into unsolved aeronautical problems.

Alviso Road continues east to ALVISO, 7 m. (8 alt., 676 pop.), at the head of a navigable slough at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, a small town of treeless streets and weatherbeaten houses. Originally the port for Mission Santa Clara and nearby ranches, it enjoyed a great boom with the Gold Rush. Produce from the valley went from here to San Francisco and up the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers in stern-wheelers. Of these old boats the best-known was the Jenny Lind, whose energetic captain forced her boilers and caused an explosion that cost thirty-five lives. With the completion in 1864 of the railroad from San Francisco, Alviso's decline began, though freight continued to be shipped by steamer for some years. Prosperity may return to Alviso if the City of San Jose carries out its plans for the creation of a deep-water port on adjoining land.

Left from Alviso 4 m. to a junction with State 17 at Milpitas.

The main side route continues south (R) from Alviso. At 9 m. is AGNEW (20 alt., 319 pop.). The fine grounds and buildings of AGNEW STATE HOSPITAL border the highway. The mentally deranged, alcoholics, and women narcotic addicts are treated here. With a normal capacity of 2,365, the institution in recent years has been badly crowded. The original buildings, erected when the hospital was established in 1888, were destroyed by the 1906 earthquake.

At 12 m. is the junction with US 101 at Santa Clara (see below).

On US 101 is SUNNYVALE (95 alt., 3,094 pop.), 41 m., surrounded by orchards and truck gardens, a town of small homes and well-kept streets in a section known for its fine saddle and racing horses. The town site is a part of Rancho Pastoria de la Borregas (the lambs’ pasture), which was divided soon after the period of American occupation between Mariano Castro and Martin Murphy, Jr. The latter secured more than four thousand acres southeast of Permanente Creek which included the sites of Mountain View and Sunnyvale. The MARTIN MURPHY HOUSE (private), Sunnyvale Ave. near California St., a two-story frame structure built from timber brought around the Horn in 1849, has been occupied continuously by members of the same family.

Right from Sunnyvale on State 9 is CUPERTINO, 3 m. (215 alt., 119 pop.), a retail trading center for the surrounding orchard and vineyard country.

Right from Cupertino on Stevens Creek Road to a junction with Permanente Road, 1.5 m.; R. on Permanente Road to the $4,000,000 PERMANENTE, CORPORATION CEMENT PLANT, 2 m. The plant includes a laboratory building, precipitator, mills, 500,000-barrel storage silos, and the tall stack—all built in 1939. The company contracted (1940) to supply 5,800,000 barrels of low-heat cement for the Central Valley's Shasta Dam project. When the two kilns, largest in the world, 12 feet in diameter and 450 feet long, are supplemented with a contemplated third, the Permanente plant will become the world's largest cement manufacturing plant. An important department is that which manufactures fifty tons per hour of sugar rock (carbonate of lime) for beet-sugar refineries.

 

North and South of the Golden Gate

 

FROM SKYLINE BOULEVARD THE HILLS UNFOLD TO THE SEA

 

MONTALVO FOUNDATION OF SAN FRANCISCO

ART ASSOCIATION NEAR SARATOGA

 

SKYLINE DAM AND BOULEVARD AT CRYSTAL SPRINGS LAKES

 

PIGEON POINT LIGHTHOUSE

 

RACCOON STRAITS FROM SAUSALITO, MARIN COUNTY

 

MUIR WOODS NATIONAL MONUMENT, MARIN COUNTY

 

IN PETRIFIED FOREST NEAR CALISTOGA

 

RUSSIAN RIVER PLAYGROUND

 

STATE CAPITOL (1853), BENICIA

 

HOME OF LUTHER BURBANK. SANTA ROSA

DIRIGIBLE HANGAR, MOFFETT FIELD, SUNNYVALE

The main side route continues south from Cupertino on State 9 to SARATOGA, 7.4 m. (500 alt., 1,191 pop.), in the midst of orchards and vineyards on the rolling hills above Campbell Creek. The town was founded by one Martin McCarthy as a convenient starting point for a toll road leading to the fine timber up Campbell Creek. Its early name, McCarthyville, was replaced in 1863 by its present one because, like its New York namesake, it was near several medical springs. Saratoga's later prosperity has come from the surrounding orchards and vineyards. Each spring, when the orchards are at the height of their bloom, the town has its Blossom Festival, a pageant which originated as a service of thanksgiving for the recovery of the orchards from the drought of 1898-99.

1. Left from Saratoga on Saratoga Road to VILLA MONTALVO, 0.5 m., formerly the home of James D. Phelan, at the end of a winding driveway, the entrance gates surmounted by carved griffins. The house of light grey sandstone in the style of an Italian villa is surrounded by broad lawns and formal gardens with rows of tall Italian cypresses leading up to fountains, Etruscan vases, and marble statuary groups. Large Irish yews are a distinctive landscaping feature. A bronze plaque commemorates the fifteenth-century Spanish writer for whom the estate was named, Ordanez de Montalvo, in whose Las Sergas de Esplandian (The Exploits of Esplandian), the name “California” first appeared. As a United States Senator, Phelan, who had been mayor of San Francisco, entertained here not only politicans but also writers, painters, and actors. “A Day in the Hills” was an annual event honoring California authors. Phelan bequeathed the estate to the San Francisco Art Association for use as a center where composers, authors, and painters might live while doing creative work. It was opened as such in the summer of 1939.

Saratoga Road continues to LOS GATOS, 4 m. (412 alt., 3,168 pop.), at the junction with State 17 (see below).

2. Right from Saratoga on Oak Street, which becomes Bollman Road, 2.8 m. to JOHN BROWN'S LODGE, the home from 1881 to her death in 1884 of Mary Brown, the widow of John Brown of Harper's Ferry. It is said that a substantial part of the $1,850 paid by Mrs. Brown for the ranch was donated by the Negro population in and around San Jose.

The main side route goes R. from Saratoga on State 9 up Campbell Creek.

At 8.7 m. is the junction with Pierce Road; R. here 0.1 m. to the junction with a one-way dirt road; L. here to the PAUL MASSON CHAMPAGNE WINERY (admission by appointment only), 1.6 m., a stone structure replacing one destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, where champagne was first produced in California. Coming to California from France in 1852, Charles le Franc found here on the rolling slopes the peculiar combination of soil and climate needed for the aristocratic champagne grapes, Pinot Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Later Paul Masson married Le Franc's daughter and subsequently inherited the winery.

State 9 continues to CONGRESS SPRINGS, 9.4 m., where D. O. MILLS and Alvinza Hayward in the 1860’s financed a fashionable spa with a large, much verandaed hotel. The hotel was burned in 1903, but the springs are still frequented by picnickers (adm. 10¢).

West of Congress Springs the route follows State 9 up a wooded canyon to Saratoga Gap at the junction with State 5, 14.8 m. (see above).

State 9 descends gradually through a heavy growth of redwood, madrone, live oak, laurel, and buckeye to CALIFORNIA STATE REDWOOD PARK, 26.4 m., occupying a bowl-shaped depression on East Waddell Creek, called Big Basin by early lumbermen. This is part of a dense redwood forest which before lumbering operations began extended a hundred miles from the Pajaro River north almost to San Francisco. About 1885 Ralph S. Smith of Redwood City first attempted to save some of the Coast redwoods from lumbermen. Others, including the Sempervirens Club of San Jose, at length were successful in getting an appropriation from the State Legislature sufficient to purchase the 3,800 acres of Big Basin. By subsequent gifts and purchases, the park was increased to 10,000 acres. Principal tree here is the Sequoia sempervirens.

At 29.7 m. is GOVERNORS’ CAMP (accommodations May 1-Oct. 1; post office, store, inn, cottages; campsites 50¢ per car, picnicking 25¢ per car). The camp's name commemorates the visits of three governors in 1901 and 1902. The sound of a trumpet brings herds of tame deer here at feeding time. A trail beginning at the camp circles through the giant trees of the park.

On US 101 at 43 m. is THE SITE OF THE BATTLE OF SANTA CLARA, the “Battle of the Mustard Stalks,” fought January 2, 1847 (on a field covered with tall mustard stalks), when Californians under Francisco Sanchez revolting against plundering Americans were defeated by a small force led by Captain Ward Marston.

Neither the old-fashioned houses on the tree-shaded streets of SANTA CLARA, 47.6 m. (72 alt., 6,571 pop.), nor the typically American business blocks dating from the seventies and eighties suggest the town's origin as a settlement surrounding the mission dedicated in 1777 to St. Clare, superior of the first Franciscan nunnery.

The first buildings put up by Father Tomas de la Pena and his colleagues were flooded. The Franciscans rebuilt in 1781, but their second structures, damaged by a severe earthquake in 1812, were destroyed completely by another earthquake six years later. A third adobe church and its surrounding secular buildings were dedicated in 1822 on the site of the University of Santa Clara (see below).

So many Americans settled here early in the 1850’s that the Spanish-speaking population became a small minority. The town's recent growth has been slow but substantial. Fruit-packing houses, a tannery, a pottery, and a cement works are its principal industrial establishments.

The SANTA CLARA WOMEN'S CLUB, 1067 Grant St., occupies an adobe built in 1782 as one of the buildings of Mission Santa Clara, the oldest structure in the Santa Clara Valley.

Behind a high rose-colored wall in a park with fine old trees is the CARMELITE MONASTERY, Lincoln St. opposite Franklin St., one of the few houses in the United States of this cloistered order whose members, giving all their time to prayer and contemplation, never leave the monastery.

CITY PARK, Lexington and Main Sts., was the plaza when Santa Clara was a Mexican pueblo.

The SECOND SITE OF SANTA CLARA MISSION is marked by a cross and monument at Campbell and Franklin Sts. In the rear of the Bray House (private), Scott Lane, an old-fashioned frame dwelling, stands a low one-story adobe with a tiled roof, a lonely relic marking the SITE OF THE SANTA CLARA MISSION INDIAN VILLAGE.

The FERNANDEZ ADOBE (private), 401 Jefferson St., a grey-white plastered adobe dating from the 1840’s, is shaded by an olive tree and a grapevine of unusual age and size.

The UNIVERSITY OF SANTA CLARA, Franklin and Grant Sts., occupying a fifteen-acre campus, owes its creation to Archbishop Joseph Sadoc Alemany of San Francisco. Hoping to save Santa Clara Mission from complete deterioration after its secularization, he invited the Jesuit Order to Santa Clara to build a college. In 1851 the Reverend John Nobili adapted what was left of the old adobe buildings to the needs of a school. Although chartered as a university in 1855, it was actually a college of arts and sciences until the establishment of colleges of law and engineering in 1912 (a school of business administration was added in 1924). The enrollment totals about seven hundred and fifty. Santa Clara was the first institution in California to bestow an academic degree; first alumnus was Thomas I. Bergin, A.B., who became a successful attorney.

Among widely known faculty members have been John J. Montgomery, who made a successful flight in a glider as early as 1883; the late Father Jerome Ricard, the “Padre of the Rains,” who by a system of co-ordinating the Government forecasts with his own observations based on the sun spots and their relation to atmospheric conditions, hoped to make accurate long-time weather forecasts; and Father Bernard Hubbard, Alaskan explorer and present head of the geology department.

The university buildings in Spanish Colonial style are all comparatively new with the exception of the theater, which dates from 1870. The Mission Play of Santa Clara has been produced here several times.

The MISSION SANTA CLARA, reconstructed in 1927 from old drawings of the adobe mission church of 1822, is the university chapel. An earlier restoration was destroyed by fire in 1926. Students and faculty were able to save some articles dating from the Spanish period which have been incorporated in the new building; among these are a large crucifix, the holy-water fonts, the wooden statues of saints at the side altars, and the reredos over the high alter. Three bells dating from the late eighteenth century and destroyed in the fire were replaced by a gift from King Alphonso XIII. The large redwood cross in front of the mission is the one which Spanish soldiers and Indians put up in 1777 on the first site of the mission, and was moved each time the mission was moved.

VARSI LIBRARY, named for the Reverend Aloysius Varsi, S.J., president of Santa Clara from 1868 to 1876, contains 100,000 volumes, among them some rare Spanish works on general science, medicine, and agriculture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

US 101 south of Santa Clara follows The Alameda, a tree-lined avenue following the old road that linked Mission Santa Clara with the pueblo of San Jose de Guadalupe. In 1799 Father Magin Catala planted a double lane of willows on each side of El Camino Real, and in the years that followed they gave a grateful shade to all those traveling between mission and pueblo: the bride and groom in lumbering carreta, the mounted fast-riding vaquero and ranchero, and the solemn marchers to the cemetery.

SAN JOSE, 50.8 m. (92 alt., 62,298 pop.) (see San Jose).

1. Right from San Jose on First Street to San Carlos Street; R. on San Carlos Street, which becomes Stevens Creek Road, to the junction with Bascom Avenue, 2.9 m. on which the main side route turns L.; R. (straight ahead) on Stevens Creek Road 1 m. to the junction with paved Los Gatos Road; L. here to the WINCHESTER MYSTERY HOUSE (adm. 50¢), 1.3 m. This fantastic structure with its strange assortments of roofs, spires, and cupolas contains 143 rooms extending over six acres. It was the creation of Sarah Winchester, widow of Oliver F. Winchester, millionaire manufacturer of firearms, who purchased upon her arrival here in the 1880’s the seventeen-room house, then under construction on the site, from which all the rest has evolved. Obsessed with the idea that if building were to stop, she would die, Mrs. Winchester kept a crew of workmen constantly busy for thirty-six years until her death in 1922. The result was a structural nightmare; stairways leading to blank walls, bathrooms with gold-plated fixtures and glass doors, fireplaces without flues, small rooms built inside larger rooms like Chinese puzzle boxes, and her private chamber, in which walls, ceiling, and even the floors were covered with white satin.

The route follows State 17 L. from the junction with Stevens Creek Road on Bascom Avenue to the junction with paved Campbell Avenue, 5.4 m.; R. here is CAMPBELL, 0.7 m. (195 alt., 1,800 pop.), known as “The Orchard City.” Here along Los Gatos Creek, Benjamin Campbell, a Kentuckian, sold lots for the town in 1887, with the proviso that the land should be forfeit to him or his heirs if liquor were sold upon it. The town's three fruit-canning plants produce annually about 7,500,000 cans; its packing plants ship about 150 carloads of dried fruit.

State 17 continues to LOS GATOS, 11.2 m. (412 alt., 3,571 pop.), which lies at the point where Los Gatos Creek flows out of its narrow canyon into the broad fertile valley. Extending along both sides of the creek, it merges imperceptibly into surrounding orchards and vineyards. Curving about the town are two mountain ridges, El Sereno (the night watchman) and El Sombroso (the shadowing one). San Thomas Aquinas Creek, a mile to the east was the boundary of Rancho Rinconada de los Gatos (little corner of the cats), which Jose Hernandez got by grant from the Mexican government in 1840 and named for two wildcats that he saw battling in the neighborhood. The first building on the townsite was a flour mill built in 1850 by James Alexander Forbes, a Scot who had been in California since 1832, and who had served as British vice-consul at Monterey since 1843. For lack of water, the mill prospered little. The village that grew up around it was slow to develop until the extension of the railroad from San Jose in 1877. Its later growth has been steady if not spectacular. Today Los Gatos subsists on packing plants which ship apricots, prunes and grapes and two wineries which produce both sweet and dry wines. Its pleasant situation and climate have attracted a number of writers, among them Charles Erskine Scott Wood, Ruth Comfort Mitchell, Sara Bard Field and John Steinbeck.

The FORBES FLOUR MILL, now a sub-station of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, on the bottom land of Los Gatos Creek, is most easily reached by crossing a foot bridge in the rear of the Los Gatos Grammar School, University Ave. between Main St. and Mullen Ave. The walls, of a hard sandstone, are heavily buttressed, and the lintels are braced with redwood timbers. The mill-wheel was turned by water brought through a wooden flume from a dam further upstream. Only a portion of the original four-story building survived a fire in 1872.

Bordering Los Gatos Creek, MEMORIAL PARK, Main and Park Sts., has a swimming pool, horseshoe courts, and picnic grounds shaded by large plane trees.

The mission-style buildings of the NOVITIATE OF THE SACRED HEART, Prospect Ave. above College Ave., overlook the town from a hill. Founded in 1868, the novitiate is a training school for the Jesuit Order. After four years of training here the novices go to St. Michael's, Spokane, for three years, spend two or three years more in teaching, and finally four years at the theologate branch at Alma in the near-by mountains. The garden has a replica of the famous well of Lourdes. The novitiate owns a vineyard of 485 acres, from whose grapes it makes sweet and dry wines.

2. Right from San Jose on First Street to Alma Avenue, R. on Alma Avenue to the junction with paved Almaden Road, 2.1 m.; L. on Almaden Road across the Guadalupe River and up Alamitos Valley.

ALMADEN, 13.8 m. (473 alt., 20 pop.), drowses in a pocket in the hills. Its two streets, following the line of Alamitos Creek, are lined with trees, chiefly the smooth-barked sycamore (Platanus racemosa). Behind the narrow brick sidewalks and trim hedges are rows of small adobe and frame houses set in old-fashioned gardens.

The quicksilver mines, for which this region is famous, have (with the exception of the mines of Spain) produced more quicksilver than any other field in the world. They were known to the Indians, who used the cinnabar for coloring their faces and bodies. In 1824 Antonia Maria Suñol, a Spaniard who had been in the French navy and who was then a shop keeper in San Jose, with Luis Chabolla developed the mine in a small way, thinking it contained silver.

Not until 1845 did a Mexican officer, Andres Castillero, discover quicksilver. He realized that if there were extensive deposits his fortune was made, for quicksilver was scarce in Mexico. He filed his claim and, forming a partnership with Padre Real of Mission Santa Clara and with some members of the Robles family who had earlier explored the region, he engaged an American named Chard to begin reducing the ore. Chard's equipment was primitive: six whaler's try-pots, three inverted over the other three, to form a furnace.

Two years later Castillero sold some shares to Barron, Forbes and Company of Tepic, Mexico, whose agent, James Alexander Forbes, introduced improved methods. By 1850 the mines had an annual yield worth $750,000. The California gold mines kept up a steady demand for the metal, which was put in iron flasks and taken by oxcart to tidewater at Alviso. The Comstock boom added to the demand. In 1865, the year of greatest output, the mine produced 47,000 flasks of mercury with a value of $2,160,000. That such production had its effect on the world market was shown when Lionel, Baron de Rothschild, lessee of the great Spanish mines, came here as a visitor in the sixties.

Throughout the 1870’s the mine continued to be highly profitable. As many as 1,000 men were employed, and the population rose to 6,000. As it became necessary to go deeper for deposits of cinnabar, however, the cost of operation rose. Moreover, quicksilver dropped in price. During the World War, the need for mercury in making fulminate caps created a new boom, and in 1940 the mines again were active.

CLUB ALMADEN, the former Casa Grande, at the northern end of the town, is a large two-story white house built of bricks brought around the Horn from Glasgow. It was erected in 1850 as a hotel. When J. E. Randol became mine owner in 1870, he made it his private residence, in which he entertained lavishly. The drawing room fireplace has an ornately carved ebony mantel with small medallions of mother-of-pearl and painted glass. Back of the house is a swimming pool (fee: Mon.-Sat., swimmers 35¢, spectators 10¢; Sun. and holidays, 45¢ and 15¢: barbecue pits and tables).

The OLD STORE at the southern end of the town, an adobe structure with brick corbie-steps at the gable ends, has been used continuously since its erection about 1850. The main roof, supported by hand-hewn posts, extends over the narrow sidewalk.

South of the old store is the half-ruined MINE OFFICE, an adobe and brick building with a wooden porte-cochere. It contains a brick vault where flasks of mercury were stored.

A trail leads south 300 yards to the smelters and furnaces, from which rise brick towers 150 feet high built against the steep slope of the canyon. The cinnabar, after being pounded into pieces about the size of an egg, was placed in the ore bed. When the fuel was fired, mercury, highly volatile, rose with the smoke into the towers and passed through a series of apertures to be cooled in a condensing chamber. By the time the smoke reached the chimney, the greater part of the mercury had been released and collected.

3. Left from San Jose on Santa Clara Street, which becomes paved, tree-lined Alum Rock Road, to the junction with Mount Hamilton Road, 6 m., on which the main side route turns R.

Left on Alum Rock Road into the wooded, rocky gorge of Penitencia Creek, named for the “house of penance,” a small adobe which once stood on the banks, where priests came to hear confessions.

The 643-acre ALUM ROCK PARK, 2.1 m. (520 alt.), owned by the city of San Jose, was named for a 200-foot cliff (L) with a surface residuum of alum dust, standing in the lower part of the canyon. Once part of the pueblo lands of San Jose, the park has become a playground landscaped so as to enhance the natural beauty of the surroundings. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Indians held their rituals here twice a year, bathed in and drank the health-giving waters. At the lower picnic grounds, in addition to a dancing pavilion, are an indoor swimming plunge (open Mar.-Nov.; Sun., 25¢-35¢; weekdays, 15¢-25¢) and individual hot sulphur baths (50¢). Six beautifully arched, native rock bridges lead to the various points of interest above the auto parking area. The park's twenty-two mineral springs are housed in rock grottos, reached by trails extending up the canyon from the end of the road. Here also are a deer paddock, a song-bird aviary, and a serpentorium.

From the lower picnic grounds Penitencia Creek Trail ascends the canyon 0.2 m. to the junction with a trail; L. here 0.3 m. to the JOAQUIN MURRIETA HIDEOUT, a natural cavern thirty feet long and four feet wide, another of the countless places in California where the bandit who has become the subject of a thousand tales is said to have concealed himself. The Penitencia Creek Trail follows up the wooded canyon to the junction with the North Fork Trail, 1 m.; L. here 0.6 m. to EAST WATER FALLS (1,200 alt.), where the waters of the creek drop sixty feet over a rocky ledge. The North Fork Trail continues to INSPIRATION POINT, 0.9 m. (1,500 alt), which affords a wide view of the park and Santa Clara Valley. The main trail goes R. up South Falls Trail to SOUTH FALLS, 2.3 m.

The main side route turns R. on Mount Hamilton Road from the junction with Alum Rock Road and climbs rugged oak-dotted slopes to the crest of MOUNT HAMILTON (no accommodations), 26.4 m., crowned by silver-domed LICK OBSERVATORY (open Mon.-Fri. 9-5, Sat. 9-9; Apr. 15-Sept. 15, Sat. 9-10; Sat. evenings, weather permitting, visitors arriving before 9 p.m. may look through telescopes). The observatory was a gift to the people of California from James Lick, a Pennsylvania piano maker who had followed his trade successfully in South America. Arriving in San Francisco in 1847 with a stake of $30,000, Lick became a millionaire through land investments and miserly practices. Though he was unkempt in appearance and his clothes were often ragged, he was capable, occasionally, of lavish spending, as when he built near Alviso a flour mill finished in mahogany and other expensive woods. At his death in 1876 he left an estate of $3,000,000. With the exception of a small gift to an illegitimate son, all this fortune was devoted to public benefactions.

Lick's deed of trust charged the trustees to expend the sum of $700,000 “for the purpose of purchasing land…and putting up on such land…a powerful telescope, superior to and more powerful than any telescope yet made…and also a suitable observatory connected therewith… The said telescope and observatory are to be known as the Lick Astronomical Department of the University of California.” On June 1, 1888, the telescope and buildings were completed and a scientific staff from the University of California began its work. Lick's body was removed from Lone Mountain Cemetery in San Francisco and buried in a crypt beneath the great 36-inch equatorial refractor.

Mount Hamilton, named in honor of the Reverend Laurentine Hamilton, pioneer missionary preacher of San Jose and first white man to climb the mountain, is a ridge running east and west and rising to three peaks. Before December, 1876, when the county completed the road to the summit, as specified in Lick's deed of trust, it took five days to get supplies and materials from San Jose. (Even the completed road, climbing 2,000 feet, makes 365 turns in the last five miles of its ascent.)

On the western peak is the silver-domed main building of the observatory, housing a 36-inch and a 12-inch equatorial refractor. The 36-inch instrument has a magnifying power which can be varied from 270 to 3,000 times that of the naked eye. The main building contains also the offices and computing rooms and a technical library of 20,000 items. The movable floor, permitting a rise and fall of 16½ feet, was the first of the kind to be constructed. Detached buildings house a 36½-inch reflecting telescope, a 6½-inch meridian circle instrument, a 6½-inch comet-seeker, a photographic telescope and a three-prism spectrograph. To enable the staff at Mount Hamilton to extend observations in the Southern Hemisphere, an observatory with a 37¼-inch Cassegrain reflector is maintained in Chile.

To most of the 10,000 visitors who each year go through the observatory, the scientists who use the mighty telescopes to penetrate the mysteries of distant space, recording minute and seemingly unrelated flares of ancient light in their effort to plot the courses of remote stars, are a crew who work with facts that are but fantasies. Often graphs and calculi which have taken years to work out are required to account for a single flash of light. During the Australian eclipse in 1922, the Lick Observatory, with fifteen-foot twin cameras, photographed images of the stars. When the photographs were compared with plates made of these stars by the same cameras four months previously, a measured deflection of 1.72” was shown: the gravitational attraction of the sun had bent the light. Thus a startling theory in physics had been proved in part. In September, 1892, the big 36-inch refractor found the fifth satellite of Jupiter, the first discovered since Galileo turned his glass to that planet. In 1904, 1905, and 1914, three more were discovered and photographed with the Crossley Reflector. The observatory has discovered thirty-three comets, 4,800 double stars, several score spectroscopic binary stars, and many hundred new nebulae. The first great success in photographing comets and the Milky Way was achieved here.