Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph

This quaint building on E. Main Street--torn down long ago--once housed the old Los Gatos News.

Picture from the Past

Local papers were always important to Los Gatans

By John S. Baggerly

William S. Walker reportedly started the first newspaper in Los Gatos. Appropriately, the back of today's Picture from the Past is labeled "the first paper." The newspaper, the Los Gatos Weekly News, came out of a humble building at 128 E. Main St. The building, long gone, stood at what today is the southeast corner of the Civic Center property and bordered Fiesta Way on the west.

The early newspaper scene in Los Gatos could be likened to a perpetual poker game with publishers coming and going, while in San Francisco and other parts of the nation, founding editors packed sidearms and--yes--sometimes used them.

One San Francisco publisher had a nasty habit of demanding a payoff for withholding a damaging story about a person. He demanded the payoff be made by dropping cash into his horse-drawn vehicle at a prearranged street corner. One such victim responded with a fatal pistol shot rather than with the payoff.

Things weren't that rough in Los Gatos, but editors did scorch each other severely. The Los Gatos newspaper publishing game started in 1881 when W. S. Walker, a Civil War veteran and a "radical Republican," founded The News. Local Democrats grew displeased with Walker's partisanship; thus a second newspaper, The Mail was founded by H. H. Main, a county supervisor, newspaperman and leading county Democrat.

Walker was the grandfather of the late Harrison Walker, a longtime Los Gatos/San Jose attorney. His widow, Alice Walker Berryman, resides at The Los Gatos Meadows. Walker, who had owned newspapers before coming here, sold out in 1885 and retired to Santa Cruz. More publishers came and went at both The News and The Mail.

When Walker returned to Los Gatos in 1892, he purchased The Mail from his former rival, W. H. B. Trantham, a former Missouri publisher who came to Los Gatos for his health.

Now we flash forward to the 1920s, with Andrew Falch publishing The Mail-News on the northside of Main Street and east of the Main Street bridge. With big city flash, Falch placed his new linotype sideways near the right front window so the operator could see pedestrians over his left shoulder. The operator was also a World War II veteran and former sergeant. Small boys in the street would stand facing "Sarge" and would not move on until he saluted them and they returned the salute.

The 1920s brought two "characters" to Los Gatos. One was a nature man who could walk into the hills adjoining town and return with a snake or two. These were placed in a screen-covered box in the window west of the linotype.

A regular Los Gatos visitor, he rented a room upstairs above the Mail-News office. A white man, he was also known as the "Santa Barbara Indian Runner"--this chap had led Santa Barbara's annual parade ahead of mounted movie star Leo Cabrillo, a Spaniard with deep California roots.

The fellow would board an Interurban Street Car that passed through Los Gatos, dismount at a place of his choosing, hide his clothes in a culvert and, wearing running shorts, take off on a romp through a part of Santa Clara Valley that he had not explored before.

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