Forget Garlic. Back in the 1950s and 1960s Gilroy was officially called “The Home of the Prune” and Chamber of Commerce publications urged people to “Eat More Fruit.”
That’s one of the funny things Chamber of Commerce president Mark Turner learned when his staff found a mystery box on a shelf when they were tidying up the downtown office. Inside were the type of items you might have seen in a time capsule buried in cement for future generations.
It has pictures and articles and chamber publications going back to 1947, when a teen staggering on the street and suspected of being drunk was front page news; forming an off-street parking commission to encourage people to shop in town was a big issue; and you didn’t have to travel to Salinas for a rodeo—there was one right in town called the Gymkhana.
In 1946, one document says, the town grew 16,000 acres of prunes and only 726 acres of garlic. One publication hyped Gilroy as a “Healthful and Prosperous Place to Live” and hailed the benefits San Luis Reservoir would bring to the city.
Back then the Dispatch was wider than a big screen TV and might have lifted a reader into the air on a windy day.
Turner is giving the documents to the historical society, but first photographing them for the Chamber’s walls and posting them on Facebook. You can see a slide show of them at www.gilroydispatch.com
“This reminds me that we have to keep track of the things we are doing now for people to see years from now,” says Turner.
