Category: History
-
“Growing Up in Los Altos”
Recently, I finished a little book that I enjoyed: “Growing Up in Los Altos” by Barbara Collins Callison. One thing that catches my attention is mention of playing in Adobe Creek during the summer. In more recent times, it dries up before making it through what is now Shoup Park (although the section in the…
-
From redwoods to chaparral
A paragraph that caught my attention in John Young’s book Ghost Towns of the Santa Cruz Mountains: Thirty lumber mills operated for seventy years on the eastern slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains above Los Gatos, changing the landscape from a verdant parkland of giant redwoods to dense, chaparral-covered slopes with rocky gullies carved by…
-
Mr. Los Altos
Passing by the Chamber of Commerce on the way to Shoup Park, I’ve sometimes wondered about the statue with the big glasses near there. Reading Robin Chapman’s wonderful “The Valley of Heart’s Delight: True Tales from Around the Bay”, I found the answer. The chapter on Walter Singer begins: Walter Singer died in 1992, which…
-
Putting an Ohlone site on the map
Reading the Wikipedia entry for Adobe Creek yesterday, I was surprised to see mention of an Ohlone site not too far away from us off of El Monte Road in Los Altos Hills: Evidence of a smaller settlement within Los Altos was uncovered in 1971, when an Ohlone burial ground with skeletons—one with ceremonial beads—was…