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Picture from the Past
Rural life was natural part of Montezuma's offerings
By John S. Baggerly
When Montezuma Mountain School for Boys felt the pinch of the Great Depression in the early l930s, local educator Charles B. "Prof" Rogers engaged Chicago University football coach Pat Page to build an athletic program that would attract promising young athletes in need of improving their grades to qualify for college. This was the method used by exclusive eastern prep schools and consequently these future greats helped defeat university freshman teams.
One imported Montezuma athlete won the high hurdles at a Bay Area prep meet at Berkeley, and Montezuma football teams twice defeated Fremont of Sunnyvale and split a two-game set with Los Gatos.
Page did attract athletes, but ultimately nothing could rescue the K-12 school for boys. Montezuma was founded on Bear Creek Road in 1910 by Rogers, a graduate of August Adolphis in Minnesota. He taught in a Minnesota high school, came west in 1909, settled in the Bay Area and taught in San Raphael and Palo Alto before opening Montezuma the following year in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The Montezuma campus was built on some 300 acres, both purchased and rented. The property included a single farmhouse and a "tent city" for housing workers. Los Gatos carpenters and students built dorms, a gymnasium, dining hall and Rogers' home and business office. The campus grounds were carved out of the hillside by horse-pulled scoops and students with pick and shovel.
A pueblo-style architecture evolved, with a mix of log buildings. There was also an athletic field large enough for football and gymkhana grounds. A pair of Peruvian horses were the first of that breed imported to the United States, and these animals were a part of horsemanship education taught by Leo Frank, a local mountaineer.
Orchards and animals on the property had to be tended, so students found farming and animal husbandry part of their education. Among other things, students milked cows, churned butter, and canned fruit.
Parents of Montezuma students arrived by train and were picked up at Alma Station, located in a canyon now flooded by Lexington Reservoir. Traditional train rides for students from Alma Station to Santa Cruz were for fun and educational value.
Month-end weekends starting on Thursday were popular. Some students returning from weekends at home were picked up Sunday evenings at Alma Station. Rogers himself was often seen waiting in Los Gatos to pick up students returning by street car or family car.
One Montezuma tradition was going "Up the Trail," a final step in the graduation exercise in which Rogers accompanied each student individually up a trail to a wooded amphitheater graduation site. Family, friends and students later gathered for a celebration at the football field.
John Baggerly is now semi-retired. This column is from the Los Gatos Weekly-Times archives.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
Charles Rogers (left) worked with football coach Pat Page to build an athletic program at Montezuma Mountain School for Boys.
