The idea is deceptively simple. One foot first, then the other,
as your guide spins stories
– histories – of what was.
Story by Emily Alpert, Michael Van Cassell and Marilyn Dubil
The idea is deceptively simple. One foot first, then the other, as your guide spins stories – histories – of what was. No screens, no sound effects, no pyrotechnics, only the guide’s words, and the rhythm of your own steps. Walking tours are almost primitive to those raised on MP3s, DVDs, HTTP and four-wheel drive, but somehow, it works. Centuries fall away from boarded-up storefronts, from common bungalows and tombstones, as tour groups pad past, spellbound by a guide’s descriptions. Time is pulled aside like a veil, underneath which a thousand ghosts dance, re-enacting past pageants. Raising kids, raising crops, raising hell; the past is alive, just under the present, if only we would bother to look.
Few do. South Valley barrels into the future, worshipping all things brave and new. New megamalls, new cul-de-sacs, new technologies, even new people: almost half its residents are new. A stone’s throw from Silicon Valley, South Valley is naturally beguiled by the future. But a few enterprising souls still try to pull its gaze to the past.
Gilroy’s History
Connie Rogers peers through the glass panels of Monterey Street’s original drugstore, at the old-fashioned prescription counter and heavy, dignified woodwork. Softly, she breathes life into the dark and shuttered building as she speaks of Julius Martin, the first white American settler in Gilroy, and his daughter, who lived above this shop.
Rogers leads a historic tour every month, and peels the years back from east Gilroy, alongside the railroad tracks; from downtown, once chattering with commerce; from the parks and cemeteries, where spring arises, new and yet nothing new at all. By now, she can rattle off the architectural styles of the storefronts downtown, can name the famous figures without resorting to her notes. She speaks of the buildings downtown like friends; she worries about them. When a shop owner swapped traditional windows for sleek, 21st-century peepers, she groaned. When the City Council told building owners to retrofit them for earthquakes, or face red tags and wrecking balls, she quaked a little, too.
“I’m just crossing my fingers the owner will get this fixed,” said Rogers, gazing into the vacant shop. “Losing this structure would seriously damage the integrity of the commercial area.”
You can read about these buildings, of course. But something emerges between footsteps, as Rogers talks of the shops that were here, of the lost Chinatown that once boomed on Monterey Street, then went up in flames. A Fifth Street pizzeria reverts to a firehouse, under Rogers’ spell; a neon-edged bar becomes City Hall. Even the Gilroy Museum itself sheds its skin, and becomes the town library. History remains in vestigial traces: the double-doors of a former dentistry, the fake owl that perches over the museum, symbolizing knowledge.
“You can touch it,” said Marty Cheek, an amateur local historian who’s treaded through history on two Gilroy tours. “It’s not just facts. It’s an actual place that people lived, with similar problems, similar personalities, but different technology.”
Even kids can connect with history on foot, said Janice Krahenbuhl, a retired third-grade teacher known for her unusual local field trips. Nationwide, kids learn local history in the third grade, but in Gilroy, they walk it. Krahenbuhl got the idea after taking her students to a San Jose historic site, and realizing that history was flush close to home, too.
“Kids don’t have any idea of history,” she said. “Once, when I was teaching summer school, a kid told me he saw that in Little House on the Prairie, they hit the kids’ hands with rulers … He asked me, ‘Did it hurt?’ ” Krahenbuhl chuckles. “They’re trying to put things together, to make sense of these hooks they have in their minds, but the hooks don’t always line up.”
Her past classes toured the Gilroy Museum, Old City Hall and even Gavilan Hills Memorial Cemetery, where Gilroy street names echo off of tombstones: Hanna, Dowdy, Eigleberry. Girls place flowers on babies’ graves; their teacher notes the oldest sites, from the 1860s and 1870s. Strangely, history springs alive in the graveyard, from the flowery epitaphs of a century past to the distinct sections of the cemetery, Japanese and Jewish, Catholic and Protestant, that testify to Gilroy’s diversity.
“People think it’s a little strange, to take 8-year-olds to the cemetery,” said Krahenbuhl, strolling between the stones. “At first, they’re intimidated. But the Habings” – who own the local funeral home, and help lead the tours – “they talk about it so matter-of-factly, that the kids get over it. They begin to ask questions.”
Too often, Cheek fears, the questions are left unasked, the history crushed under what’s new. Gilroy’s mind-boggling growth has stocked the town with thousands of new people, drawn by new homes and new jobs, unaware or uninterested in the little city’s past. Oddball facts like its onetime claim-to-fame as California’s tobacco capital, or its status as the third-oldest city in the county, seem like trivia.
“A lot of people just see it as a place they build a home, and they don’t explore any farther than that,” he said.
And to Claudia Salewske, local history isn’t just a cautionary tale, dry episodes we’re warned not to repeat. She’s written three Gilroy history books: first, a third-grade textbook, based on the walking tours she researched for the Theatre Angels Art League; second, a grown-up version of the same; third, a compilation of photographs, for the Images of America series. For her, history makes the moorings of a healthy community.
“We’re in a world where we’re so prone to want the newest things,” she said. “So much so, that you lose something. You don’t know where you came from. You don’t have a sense of being a part of something.
“It’s not always good stuff,” she added. “But you need these stories, to be grounded.”
Historic San Juan Bautista
With nicknames such as “Old San Juan,” “The Mission City” and “The City of History,” it wouldn’t be surprising if San Juan Bautista packed the most history per capita of any town in California.
Recently selected as a “Preserve America” community, San Juan Bautista steps back in time with a touch of Europe, the facades of an Old West boomtown and the natural agrarian beauty of California. The best part is, all of this is contained in about a dozen blocks easily accessible to walkers.
The San Juan Bautista Chamber of Commerce’s historic walking tour traverses three streets and features almost 50 buildings dating mainly from the 1850s and 1860s.
“We would anticipate at least two hours and maybe longer if you decide to go to the cemetery,” said Cara Vonk, a San Juan Bautista Historic Resources board member.
The San Juan Bautista Historic Resources board recently helped the city update its historic resource survey. The survey was completed in September 2006 with the help of a $25,000 grant from the California Office of Historic Preservation and many volunteer hours, Vonk said. The survey will update the walking tour, she said.
The city has two recognized historic districts. The California State Park Mission Plaza Historic District is on the National Register of Historic Places. The other is the recently recognized San Juan Bautista Third Street Historic District, which includes 29 buildings.
For some, it’s hard to pick a favorite spot on the walking tour.
“It is difficult to highlight individual buildings because together they’re all a part of this unique experience,” said Becky McGovern, one of the walking tour’s originators.
But the crown jewel of the city is perhaps the dominating 210-year-old Mission San Juan Bautista, sitting atop the San Andreas Fault and facing the only remaining Spanish plaza in California.
Across that historic plaza lies one of the oldest buildings in San Juan Bautista, the Castro-Breen Adobe. It was built between 1838 and 1841 for the prefect of the northern district of Alta California, Jose Antonio Castro. The adobe would come to house one of the county’s oldest families, the Breens, in 1848.
Although the walking tour visits several central streets of San Juan Bautista, it doesn’t hurt to stray off the beaten path.
“By wandering the streets of San Juan Bautista, visitors can discover many other private historic homes and will know why San Juan Bautista is called the Williamsburg of the West,” Vonk said.
The keeping of its historic buildings may be attributed to a long-standing tradition of the city’s inhabitants resisting external imposition, according to architect Kent Seavey, who completed a historical survey of the town in 1981. With the city officials’ continued opposition to big box stores, that tradition may preserve San Juan’s history for many years to come.
Morgan Hill turns 100
In Morgan Hill, it’s up to the history-seeker to find his or her way through the bygone days of the 100-year-old city. Gloria Pariseau of the Morgan Hill Historical Society said the group used to offer a brochure to guide walkers in their quest for the city’s historical sites.
“There are quite a few interesting and beautiful buildings here,” she said. “It’s certainly worth a walk around town to see them all.”
Morgan Hill spent 2006 celebrating the 100 years since its incorporation. Throughout the year, the community was steeped in Morgan Hill history, reaching into the past to rediscover some of the events that make the city unique.
People were talking about Isola Kennedy, the temperance worker who battled a mountain lion to save the boys in her Sunday School class, and the romantic and tragic lives of Diana and Diane Murphy Hill. A stroll through today’s Morgan Hill downtown can waken an interest in the city of the past.
Traveling south down Monterey Road, just before the downtown area, is a great place to start a walk through history, the site of Villa Mira Monte. Hiram Morgan Hill built the home in 1884 for his wife, Diana Murphy.
Diana met and fell in love with Hiram when she was 22, but her parents disapproved of the match, so the two married in a secret ceremony in 1882. Months later, as her father lay dying, he asked Diana to promise not to marry Hill. She appeased her father with a lie which, after his death came back to haunt her. She later sought a divorce.
Diane Murphy Hill, the only daughter of Diana and Hiram, was educated at “high society” schools, and her mother had hopes of her marrying a member of European aristocracy. Diane had no such dreams, but married Baron H. de Reinach-Werth in 1911. A few months later, when Diane was in Paris, she learned her father had suffered a stroke. She had a nervous breakdown and apparently committed suicide, throwing herself from a high balcony.
The home of Diana and Hiram Moragn Hill is now in the care of the Morgan Hill Historical Society and is open to the public.
Also on the Villa Mira Monte site is the Acton family house, built in 1911. It was originally located on Warren Avenue, then moved to West Main Avenue, behind the Morgan Hill Library, and was used as a community museum. In 2006, the home was moved to the Villa Mira Monte site and renovated and will be open to the public again in the summer.
Another new addition to the Villa Mira Monte site is the historic trail which was created for the city’s 100th birthday. The landscaped spiral trail references approximately 90 significant Morgan Hill historical events on raised posts. Historical events that are national in significance are etched in black granite on the surface of the trail.
Reaching the downtown area, which begins at Monterey Road and Main Avenue, looking west, there is a clear view of El Toro Mountain. The peak was named by Bret Harte of the Overland Monthly after he reportedly was riding on the mountain and encountered two bulls.
On the south side of First Street, west of Monterey Road, is the former Presbyterian parsonage, a Queen Anne-style home built in 1908 by A. E. Bradford. The home was purchased by the United Presbyterian Church in 1929 and used as the parsonage for 34 years before it was sold as a private residence.
One block south on the northwest corner of Second Street and Monterey Road is the Millhouse Mall, originally the Mason and Triggs Dry Goods Store, built in 1896. For many years, the second floor served as a community hall.
Continuing south, on the northwest corner of Monterey Road and Third Street, is the Skeels Hotel. Originally owned and operated as a hotel and restaurant by Harry and Cynthia Skeels from 1925 to 1948, the building was later demolished. A new building was constructed in its place, and the Morgan Hill Historical Society played a role in having the original Skeels Hotel flagpole installed on the new building.
End the stroll back in time at the John Page house, where Alberta Page handed out bag lunches to ranch and construction workers who boarded there for $1 a day, three meals included.
The History of Mission San Juan Bautista
By Michael Van Cassell
Perched on a ridge overlooking the San Juan Valley and straddling the San Andreas Fault, the Mission San Juan Bautista draws visitors of all denominations with its historic charm.
Founded in 1797 by Spanish missionaries, San Juan Bautista was the 15th California mission and was completed in 1812. The mission’s location was chosen not only for its beauty, but for its central locale as well. The nearby missions of San Jose, Santa Cruz, Monterey and Soledad were only a day’s ride away by horse.
With its three-aisled basilica, San Juan is the largest of California’s missions.
The mission land was nationalized in 1835 under the Mexican government and eventually given back to the church in 1895. Mission San Juan is owned by the Catholic Diocese of Monterey.
Mary Anzar, who works in the mission’s gift shop, said it is a special place for every county resident.
“It’s about the oldest thing in San Benito County,” Anzar said. “So you can imagine all the families that were baptized here, all the families that were married here.”
Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” was filmed at the mission and is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Anzar said.
“And we’re one of the few missions that still has Mass,” Anzar said.
Mission San Juan hold Mass every weekday at 8:30am, on Saturdays at 5:30pm and on Sundays at 8:30am and 10am in English and in Spanish at noon.
More than 50,000 school children visit the Mission each year.
San Juan Bautista Walking Tours
Pick up a copy of the San Juan Bautista walking tour in the Chamber of Commerce at 204 Third Street, Suite D, or go online at www.san-juan-bautista.ca.us/history.htm. The Web site also has links to historical information.
Gilroy Historical Society Walking Tours
All tours leave from the Gilroy Museum, 195 Fifth St., from 10am to noon, unless otherwise specified.
March 3: Hanna and Rosanna streets
April 7: Old Gilroy I (Railroad and Alexander streets)
May 5: Old Gilroy II (Forest and Chestnut streets)
June 2: Gavilan Hills Memorial Park Cemetery (Meet at the cemetery, 1000 First St.)
July 7: Fifth Street
Aug. 4: Children’s Tour (Train Station, Old City Hall, Fire Station)
Oct. 6: William Weeks Building
Nov. 3: Old St. Mary Cemetery (Meet in front of St. Joseph Family Center, 7950 Church St.)
Self-guided MH History Walking Tour
– Start at Villa Mira Monte and the Morgan Hill Museum and history trail,
all located at 17860 Monterey Road.
– Continue south on Monterey Road to West First Street; on the south side is
the Presbyterian Parsonage, built in 1908.
– Next stop is the northeast corner of Second Street at the Millhouse Mall.
– Crossing over Monterey Road to West Third Street, on the north side is the
former Skeels Hotel.
– Finish at the John Page house, 17100 Monterey Road on the corner of Fifth
Street.
