Photograph courtesy of the Town Library collection.
This is one of the wooden bridges that linked east and west Main Street during the past century when winter rains washed away a series of structures. A three-arch stone and concrete bridge served for many years before the current freeway overpass was built in the mid-1980s.
When was the beginning of the Picture from the Past column--the genesis, so to speak? It was the day that Barbara Gibson Baggerly, my better half, my better speller and my better memory, was asked by Mimi Negendank, a teacher at Blossom Hill School, to give a talk to lower-grade students on the history of Los Gatos. At the time, Barbara was a volunteer one-on-one reader with students who needed help with their literacy skills.
Barbara, who had raised four children of her own, learned that holding the interest of younger children would be difficult even with photographs. So, she countered with an offer to conduct a walking tour through town to see the actual locations of history. Mimi, wife of Bob Negendank of the high-school faculty, said, "Go for it."
Mrs. B. borrowed the photograph shown here and set out with her brood to walk through town, starting with the beautiful three-arch stone-faced bridge that was replaced in the mid 1980s with the freeway overpass.
She told the children that her photo in hand was one of a series of wooden bridges that were washed away by winter storms. She grabbed the attention of her walkers by adding that "bad men" were hanged from these wooden bridges. It has been a popular belief that "bad men" were hanged from the old wooden bridges that linked Main Street. A rope thought to have been used in a hanging entered local history when Allan L. Beattie Sr., one of the last owners of Corner Drug Store, commissioned Los Gatos High School senior Judy Curtis to research the "corner" in 1966. Her study revealed a "one-inch in diameter rope used to hang an outlaw Garcia." The rope was found in a small building behind what became the Corner Drug Store in the La Cañada building.
Years later, local historian Bill Wulf said that he could find no records of hangings in local and San Jose newspaper files.
Notwithstanding the number of hangings that may or may not have taken place, for Barbara and her group it was "westward ho" a few yards to Crider's Department Store, from where--at Thanksgiving time--a "turkey fling" was held, with the retriever getting to keep the bird.
Next it was the Los Gatos Theater on N. Santa Cruz Avenue, where the Metro-Goldwyn Mayer lion himself was parked in his state-of-the-art mobile cage thus advertising the studio's latest film. Localites insisted that when a citizen showed up armed with a family camera, Mr. Lion relocated himself in front of the lensman. The walking students nodded for they knew the handsome animal from Saturday matinees.
Then Barbara and her brood walked onto what had been a vacant lot at the northeast corner of N. Santa Cruz Avenue and Royce Street, where late each summer a carnival pitched tents and a wrestler offered prize money for any "local" who could avoid being pinned for a minute or more. The kids felt local pride when told that restauranteur Louie Vlamis could not only stay with the strongman, but toy with him and walk away with $15 or $20.
Next stop for Barbara's group was the southeast corner of Saratoga and N. Santa Cruz avenues, site of the town's first cemetery and where a runaway Interurban Railroad car jumped the tracks and ran into headstones. Today that corner is partly occupied by Little Village.
It was Mrs. B.'s walking tour that inspired me to look at "pictures from the past" when I started this column in 1990.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, August 7, 1996.
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