Photograph courtesy of Los Gatan Scott Rose, treasurer and host of San Jose Postcard Club
The mountain behind Hotel Lyndon, seen here in the early 1900s, is El Sereno, not Monte Sereno,
a name selected by contest when the local municipality was founded in 1957.
In a previous column, we referred to two mountains embracing Los Gatos as El Sombroso and Monte Sereno.
A former Monte Sereno mayor, Steve Dorman (1967-68) responded: "You write: 'Mt. El Sombroso, the sister of Monte Sereno, the mountain that runs on the west side of Los Gatos.' The error is that the name of the mountain is El Sereno, not Monte Sereno.
"The meaning of the two names is quite different. El Sereno is the name for a night watchman, but Monte Sereno is just the name picked for our city and has some meaning like Sereno Acres of Woodlands, and many real estate developments or subdivisions have such names.
"For instance, I knew a man who owned a house in Montes de Oca, meaning the natural spaces of Oca. I don't know who gave you the meaning of Monte Sereno but it is just a name that was picked out of a local contest for a suitable name [when the city incorporated on May 14, 1957]."
Dorman continues: "It has been a name that was full of sound and fury but meant nothing. Additionally, just to be mean, El Sombroso cannot be a sister of Monte Sereno--a brother, maybe, but not a sister!
"You can find the name of El Sereno on the appropriate USGA map that covers the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno-Saratoga area. Perhaps the subject of the screwed-up meaning for the name of Monte Sereno could be the subject of a good column."
Dorman, a retired chemist who was with Stauffer Chemical Co., and his wife, Elwyn, moved recently to San Diego. He was a Monte Sereno councilmember from 1959 to 1974.
Newspaper guys sometimes try to cover their errors by saying they are intentional just to test the alertness of their readers. Certainly this line was not tried on Dorman; nor would it work on Paul Bostwick of the Los Gatos High School faculty, who noticed in our offering on the presidents in our Feb. 21 column that Franklin D. Roosevelt was not the nephew of Teddy Roosevelt but that FDR's wife, Eleanor, was the niece of Teddy.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, March 6, 1996.
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