Incarnacion Garcia had nowhere to hide. He was locked up in the crude Los Gatos jail, called "the sweat box," when he no doubt heard a commotion outside of his cell.

It would turn out to be more than just a commotion—it was a lynch mob.

Garcia had been accused of stabbing Rafael Mirivale to death after the two had a "disagreement while playing a game of crib in the saloon at the Ten Mile House," as was reported at the time in the San Jose Daily Mercury.

"Local instances of the courts allowing [murderers] to go free had incensed the people of Los Gatos to the point that they had organized a vigilance committee," the newspaper account continued.

So the vigilantes—many of them respected Los Gatos citizens—pulled Garcia from his cell, dragged him down Main Street and hung him from the Main Street Bridge—all within half an hour of Mirivale's death.

It was called "Los Gatos Justice" in the Daily Mercury edition of June 19, 1883. But what it's called now, some 120 years later, is part of the colorful history of a town very different from its 21st-century counterpart.

Pre-1900 Los Gatos was a town in its infancy. The town was established in 1887 and covered an area that included one square mile on each side of Los Gatos Creek. A 12-member committee set the boundaries, and a board of trustees was selected to run the new town. Palmer Perkins of Perkins Stoves and Tinware was the first chairman of that board—in effect, the town's first mayor.

But while that marked the town's beginning, the history of Los Gatos dates back much earlier.

Bill Wulf, well-known Los Gatos historian, indicates that the first residents of the area were the Ohlone Indians. The tribe settled next to the Los Gatos Creek, on a trail that spanned from the San Francisco Bay over the Santa Cruz Mountains to Monterey Bay.

Captain Juan Bautista de Anza later camped by the creek, near what we now know as Lark Avenue, on his search for the Presidio of San Francisco.

But the first real settlers in the area were Jose Maria Hernandez and Sebastian Fabian Peralta, who in 1839 built an adobe home next to the creek in the Vasona area.

"There were still Indians living in the area," said Wulf. "[Hernandez] used them to help him [build the adobe]. He paid them, but not very well."

Hernandez and Peralta and their wives raised cattle and children, "but they had no cash for taxes, so they had to subdivide their land," said Wulf. "They couldn't afford to live here. See, nothing really changes—it just goes in circles."

Flour power

Along came James Alexander Forbes, "probably the most intelligent, well-educated man in California," said Wulf, and he purchased 2,000 acres from Hernandez. "Purchased" may not be exactly the correct word, however, because, Wulf says, "Forbes never paid him."

Forbes went on to open the Santa Rosa Brand Flour Mill. It was less than a successful venture for the man for whom the Forbes Mill Museum is now named. It was taken over in foreclosure in a year by Gustaf Touchard, and was later owned by William McMurty and company—it would be nearly two decades before the mill would run profitably.

During that era, Los Gatos still wasn't much of a town. But it was home to the lumberyard owned by Julian Hanks and Isaac Branham, who built the first sawmill on the Los Gatos Creek up in the Lexington area. That was in 1847, and by 1858 the town of Lexington featured a hotel, houses and a general store run by Bernard Joseph, called "Joseph the Jew," who would later hire a young clerk named John Lyndon—more on him later.

Taking its toll

At about the same time, a toll road was established over the Santa Cruz Mountains. Travelers would pay their toll in Los Gatos, then again at the summit near the cabin of Charlie McKiernan—the infamous Mountain Charlie.

Now, Mountain Charlie's life in the Santa Cruz Mountains is the stuff legends are made of. But there was one incident Wulf recalls that occurred in 1858 on the toll road to Santa Cruz. Dan Rowe's circus was making the trip over the mountain, complete with two elephants—Victoria and Albert.

"They couldn't pay the toll, though, so Mountain Charlie wasn't going to let them through," said Wulf. It wasn't until Rowe threatened to have one of the elephants pick up Charlie and throw him off a cliff that the mountainman acquiesced and allowed the circus to pass. Mountain Charlie had tangled with mountain lions and bears—so many times that he always wore a hat to cover the scars—but an elephant proved to be his match.

The same year, 1858, the first bridge was constructed over the Los Gatos Creek—much to the consternation of Incarnacion Garcia, we're sure.

Around 1860, the first hotel was built in Los Gatos, next to the toll house. But the Ten Mile House wasn't really much of a hotel, says Wulf. "It was a 10-foot shake shanty, and they covered the walls inside with newspaper," he said.

Still, things were starting to shape up in town. The first Los Gatos Post Office was established not far from where it stands today—in the Ten Mile House at the site of the current Tollhouse Hotel. Henry D. McCobb, who had taken over the Ten Mile House in 1862 and renamed it the Rinconada House, was the first postmaster.

"He had a dance hall in Santa Clara," said Wulf. "But he was fired as the postmaster of Santa Clara, so he came here and ran the post office in a corner of the little hotel."

Cobbsville?

McCobb owned 100 acres that stretched from the toll house to Bean Avenue and wanted to subdivide what he would call Cobbsville. But John Lyndon had other ideas.

Lyndon, the son of Irish immigrants, was born in Vermont but traveled west and ended up in Lexington, working in the general store for "Joseph the Jew." It wasn't long before he purchased the store and was running it himself.

In 1868, Lyndon bought McCobb's 100 acres. He would go on to establish Los Gatos Hotel, destroyed by fire in 1899 but rebuilt in 1901 as the Hotel Lyndon, a local landmark at the corner of Main Street and Santa Cruz Avenue.

At the time, though, "growth was slow" in the town, says Wulf. "It wasn't until the railroad came to town that Lyndon started to subdivide."

That's when things started to happen in town. The first narrow-gauge train of the South Pacific Coast Railroad arrived in Los Gatos in 1878, and with it came progress—including the telegraph and telephone the same year; the Los Gatos Weekly News on July 4, 1881, which of course was the beginning of the Los Gatos Weekly-Times; the first electric lights in 1891; and the first horseless carriage in 1899.

By that time, the flour mill was prospering, lumber remained a viable commodity and other industry was established, including the Los Gatos Canning Company (1882). The Macabee Gopher Trap Company opened in 1885 and still operates in town today.

A "small town made of wood" sprang up on Main Street, with wooden sidewalks, wooden buildings and one power pole. Progress also brought with it problems with teen-aged speeders—the streets were becoming "speeding race tracks for our young townsmen who own blooded horses," wrote the Los Gatos Weekly News.

Of course, Incarnacion Garcia would never see it. He had taken "a fatal plunge into eternity from the railing of a high bridge" as the likes of James H. Lyndon, Cary Daves, Charles Johnson and "a village of knownothings" looked on.

It was, after all, a very different time.

LOS GATOS

PRE-1900

For more than 10,000 years, the Ohlone Indians lived in the Vasona Park area, alongside the Los Gatos Creek and on a trail that stretched from the San Francisco Bay over the Santa Cruz Mountains to Monterey Bay.

March 25, 1776—Captain Juan Bautista de Anza and his expedition—searching for a site for the Presidio of San Francisco—camped on the Los Gatos Creek, near the present Lark Avenue.

Jan. 12, 1777—The first Mission Santa Clara was built, using redwood timbers from the Los Gatos area.

Aug. 28, 1791—President of the Franciscan Missions of California Father Fermin Francisco de Lausen established the Mission Santa Cruz and opened the portion of El Camino Real over the Santa Cruz Mountains and through Los Gatos to Mission Santa Clara.

July 23, 1839—Jose Maria Hernandez and Sebastian Fabian Peralta are granted the 6,631-acre El Rancho Rinconada de Los Gatos (corner of the cats). The brothers-in-law build their adobe home along the Los Gatos Creek in what is now Vasona Park.

Nov. 29, 1847—Julian Hanks and Isaac Branham build the first sawmill on the Los Gatos Creek, in the Lexington area, and establish a lumberyard in Los Gatos at E. Main Street and College Avenue.

Dec. 1, 1855—James Alexander Forbes' Santa Rosa Brand Flour Mill—now the Forbes Mill Museum—begins milling for local wheat farmers and the village starts to grow along E. Main Street.

Oct. 16, 1855—The Santa Cruz Gap Turnpike Joint Stock Company's toll road is completed from Los Gatos to Mountain Charley's, connecting with the Santa Cruz Turnpike and making direct stagecoach travel from San Jose to Santa Cruz possible.

Dec. 8, 1864—The first Los Gatos Post Office was established in the Ten Mile House Hotel, where the Tollhouse Hotel stands today.

March 20, 1878—The first narrow-gauge train of the South Pacific Coast Railroad arrives, connecting Alameda and San Jose to Santa Cruz.

April 22, 1882—The Los Gatos Canning Company was established on N. Santa Cruz Avenue to serve the increasing number of local fruit orchards.

Aug. 10, 1887—The Town of Los Gatos was established, incorporating one square mile on both sides of the Los Gatos Creek.

Jan. 31, 1891—The first operation of electric lights by the Los Gatos Manufacturing Company occurs.

March 16, 1899—The first horseless vehicle appears on Los Gatos streets.

Timeline is courtesy of Los Gatos historian William A. Wulf. Through his tireless efforts and dedication, the glorious history of Los Gatos will live forever.

Photograph courtesy of Bill Wulf Wearing dunce caps and carrying bird cages? This could be the first protest march in Los Gatos as women promote the suffrage movement.

Library's ambitious historical effort is making the past last

By Nisha Ramachandran

Like other eBay devotees, Peggy Conaway keeps an eye on her bids during the day. Things are looking particularly promising for her this afternoon. As she checks her wish list, she's still the top bidder on all of her items.

That's good news, because Conaway doesn't just lose a coveted item when someone outbids her. She loses a piece of Los Gatos history.

It's part of Conaway's job to scour eBay for Los Gatos memorabilia. For the past three years, she has been leading the way to preserve the town's past.

It is an ambitious undertaking. Working from a collection that spans decades, her goal is to categorize and digitize these historical records. The end result will be an online database of information and materials relating to Los Gatos.

"This is such a rich collection," Conaway says. "We wanted to preserve it first and then make it accessible to people."

The project started purely by chance three years ago, when Conaway became the director of the Los Gatos Public Library. Soon after she started her new job, Conaway noticed a pile of papers and photos haphazardly stacked in the corner of a storage area. Curious, she started to look through the items.

As it turned out, the library was sitting on a collection of very rare materials. In that stash, Conaway found old photographs and documents dating back to the early 1900s. She later learned that the collection had been donated to the library during the 1950s by local banker and amateur historian Clarence Hamsher.

But many of the items Conaway found were also falling apart. Clips from a local paper in the 1950s were so brittle they couldn't be handled; images from photographs were often old and faded.

"If you're doing local research history, this kind of thing, the older it gets, the harder it is to find," Conaway says.

So she decided to organize and preserve what the library had.

Three years later, Conaway is working with more than just the library collection. Thanks largely to longtime residents who have generously either donated or loaned their personal collections, the library's project has kept growing.

Recently, the History Museum of Los Gatos also loaned part of its collection to be archived by the history project's staff.

And eBay has proved to be another treasure trove of historical artifacts. Most of the items sold are postcards dating back to the early 1900s but Conaway has had other finds, like an old soda bottle, stamped with the imprint of the Los Gatos Soda Company.

Her favorite discovery has been a book of 14 tickets for a round trip on the inter-urban railway in 1908.

"For $15, I bought a little piece of Los Gatos history on eBay," she says.

Most of the library's collection is being digitized, with the originals stored for preservation. The process is strikingly simple; using IBM donated equipment, the staff can scan the original item into the computer and add it to the growing number of items already stored on the computer's hard drive.

Identifying the items poses a much bigger challenge. Many of the photos and cards the library has are without labels or names, leaving it up to the staff to make educated guesses about the location shown in or other content of the photographs.

Technology also helps in this respect. Using a computer program, the project's staff can clean up and zoom in on images. This often reveals clues that aren't visible to the naked eye.

In one case, a photo of about 12 women in a line, all wearing dunce caps and carrying birdcages, stumped the staff. What were the women doing? And why were they carrying birdcages?

When the picture was enhanced, letters emerged on some of the women's hats. Although no complete word was visible, some members of the history project now think the group was calling for women's rights.

Despite the wealth of information already collected and digitized, the project is far from being complete.

Another pressing task for Conaway: find continued funding. Although the money for the project has come entirely from donations, she is looking for other sources of revenue. Conaway plans to apply for a grant from the national government this year for more income.

In the meantime, she relies on a committed group of volunteers to staff the project, keeping costs down.

"Our mission is to make this information accessible," she says. "These things have to be preserved."

Donations to the Los Gatos history project can be made to: The Library Trust Fund-digitize, Los Gatos Public Library, 110 E. Main Street, Los Gatos, CA 95030. For more information, call Peggy Conaway at 408.354.6895 or email localhistory@losgatosca.gov.