Photograph courtesy of William A. Wulf
From 1858 to 1880, this stagecoach took passengers from San Jose to Los Gatos and over the mountains to Santa Cruz.
Picture from the Past
Local historian recalls days of toll roads, stagecoaches
By John S. Baggerly
The information for this week's column comes courtesy of Los Gatos historian William A. "Bill" Wulf. Previous to Oct. 16, 1858, stagecoach travel to Santa Cruz operated from San Francisco to San Jose, via El Camino Real, or by steamboat to Alviso with an omnibus to San Jose. At this point, a transfer was made to a stagecoach to Santa Cruz that traveled south from San Jose along El Camino Real--or Monterey Highway--to San Juan Bautista, Watsonville and north to Santa Cruz.
This route was called "traveling 'round the torn" and took two days, with a stopover in San Jose. The stage line was established in 1854, and by Aug. 7, 1857, the Pacific Sentinel newspaper of Santa Cruz announced: "The stages make daily trips from San Jose to this place, and yet we have only a tri-weekly mail. Why is this?"
With the opening of the Santa Cruz Gap Turnpike Joint Stock Company's toll road and the Santa Cruz Turnpike Company's toll road over the Santa Cruz Mountains on Oct. 16, 1858, to wagon traffic, it became possible to reach San Francisco from Santa Cruz in a single day.
The route taken by the stagecoach was as follows. The stage initially left from the Santa Cruz House, a hotel. After 1866, the stage left from the new Pacific Ocean House on Pacific Avenue. With a four-horse team, the stage headed north from the lower plaza, turned east, forded the San Lorenzo River, turned north and climbed over Graham Hill Road to the house of Hiram Scott. The four-horse team was then changed to six for the long pull up the grade of the toll road to the cabin of "Mountain Charley" McKiernan.
At first, the toll house of the Santa Cruz Turnpike was located near Bean Creek, so it was possible to collect tolls from either direction. The collecting was moved to McKiernan's cabin on the summit on May 2, 1864. Here he, with help from Scott, built a second cabin next to the toll road. By 1865, McKiernan had built a two-story addition to his cabin and operated what he named The Mountain House to give stage passengers food, drink and lodging if they so desired.
From the summit, the stage descended the north side of the mountains to Patchen Post Office, established in 1872. The next stop was Forest House, a resort hotel build by Lysander Collins in 1862. That area later was named Alma. Two miles north was Jones' Mills, later named Lexington. Here, the six-horse stage teams were changed for a fresh four-horse team and the stage proceeded to the Ten Mile House in Forbes Mill, as Los Gatos was called at the time. Ten Mile House, also known as Gleason's, was Los Gatos' first hotel, built in 1860 next to the toll house of the Santa Cruz Gap Turnpike Joint Stock Company.
The stage then traveled north on the "upper road" to Santa Clara, which was later named San Tomas Aquino Road and eventually N. Santa Cruz Avenue. When it became Winchester, the stage turned northwest at Capri Drive and followed the old Saratoga-Santa Clara Road into Santa Clara, where it stopped at the Union Hotel, operated by John Cameron. The Pacific Sentinel touted him as follows: "The proprietor of the hotel has a high reputation for a good table, good beds and for courtesy and attention. Try him."
From Santa Clara, the stages proceeded to the Jenny Lind Wharf, where the steamboats of the California Steam Navigation Company picked up the stage passengers in Alviso. The steamboats reached the port of San Francisco in three to four hours.
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
