Los Altos
The town of Los Altos was founded by Paul Shoup who was a big executive in the Southern Pacific Railroad company. He bought the 140 acres of land that would become the town from Sarah Winchester, the creator of the famous Winchester Mystery House, in 1906. The original purpose of the town was for it to serve as a railway cut off in between Los Gatos and Mayfield and in 1907 the first purchases of the town lots took place after a barbeque. The location of this monumental purchasing session is the intersection of Main street and Foothill Expressway. Los Altos remained quiet for the next few decades but in 1952 the population exploded, helping shape the town into what it is today.
Los Altos Hills
Los Altos Hills initially consisted of two Mexican-American land grants named Rancho San Antonio and Rancho La Purisima Concepcion. Adobe Creek functioned as a natural boundary between these two areas. However, the land did not stay with these two owners for long as Elizabeth Yuba and her husband William Taafe received the land that now makes up Foothill College campus from her father and built a house there where they raised their four children whose descendants still supposedly live in the Los Altos area. These Ranchos were further divided up when the land was sold off mostly to be used as vineyards and also was bought up by the wealthy people in San Francisco to serve as their summer estates. The town of Los Altos Hills has always had a rural feel and the town works to try and maintain that to this day. Also, there have been some notable finds in Los Altos Hills after it was incorporated in 1956, in the 1970s Ohlone Indian Burial grounds were discovered and the archeological digs that followed were carried out by Foothill College.
Sources
https://www.losaltosca.gov/community/page/history-los-altos
https://www.losaltoshills.ca.gov/218/Town-History
Interesting post, Alex! I honestly didn't know that Los Altos and Los Altos Hills were two separate towns until a few years ago. Paul Shoup, who founded Los Altos, actually built a home in Los Altos that is now designated as a historic site by the National Register of Historic Places. In fact, it was the first such designation in Los Altos. It was put on the market once again most recently in 2014, and five different families have resided there.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.losaltosonline.com/special-sections2/sections/your-home/48495-los-altos-landmark-four-families-later-shoup-house-goes-on-the-market
This is fascinating! Mountain View, while it is close, has a bit of a different history. The city was used as a pasture for sheep and cattle for the Mission in Santa Clara. Even though Mountain View is kind of far from Santa Clara. In 1854, the Mexican government gave Mariano Castro the rights to the pasture that would some day become Mountain View. He is the person who Castro Street is named after.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mountainview.gov/about/history.asp
This is a really interesting post about a very relevant topic. As we live in California, the whole of Westward expansion and the Mexican American war apply. Despite these being a long time ago, there is still evidence of Native American settlement as well as Catholic Missionaries in the surrounding areas. Los Altos is a pretty small town, but it still has its own history. It is interesting that despite the two towns being so close together, ofter regarded as one place, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills have very different historical backgrounds, one more relevant of the industrialization and the horizontal integration of railroads during the Gilded Age, and the other showing more signs of Native American treatment and pushing out of their lands. Today, you would not truly be able to identify these differences by the way these two towns are. Knowing that they come from different backgrounds gives a person more appreciation for the areas around them and their history.
ReplyDelete