History of Santa Clara County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 53

Author: Sawyer, Eugene Taylor, 1846-
Publication date: 1922
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1928

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"To the tribes which occupied the heart of the valley of Santa Clara at the advent of the Franciscans, according to local tradition, Mar- cello came a stranger, speaking a strange dia- lect. His heroic size and princely bearing seem to have lent credence to his boast that through his veins coursed the blood of kings. His ancestors are supposed to have been royal Yumans of the valley of the Colorado River, and this reputed scion of a great aboriginal family was instinctively hailed as a chief by the tawny sun-worshippers whose wigwams cast their shadow in the fretful Guadalupe. He was hailed instinctively as chief, perhaps, be- cause his very figure was commanding, since he is said to have loomed above the squat In- dians of Santa Clara as the Sequoia looms above the dwarf pines of the Sierra.

"An inscription in the San Jose Public Li- brary informs the reader that Marcello's meas- ure of life was 125 years; that he opened his eyes on the world in 1750, and was gathered to his fathers in 1875. The longevity of his existence may be the better appreciated by reference to characters and incidents of the history which civilization was inditing the while Marcello rose to manhood and stalked, an imposing figure, through the romantic Mission age, through the revolutionary Mexi- can period, through the epochal era of mad- dening gold strikes, and on down through the still greater era of American progress-an era in which not the mineral gold but the richer vegetable gold becomes the stable basis of prosperity.

"This Indian celebrity, who is said to have assisted Padre Thomas de la Pena to raise the storied Mission Cross near the laurelwood on the banks of the Guadalupe January 12, 1777, and who is quoted as having averred that he had seen Lieutenant Jose de Moraga raise the royal emblem of Spain at the founding of the Pueblo de San Jose, was supposedly toying with wampum and feathers in the wigwam of his father when young George Washington. leading a band of colonials, accompanied the

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British General Braddock and his veterans on the disastrous march against Fort Duquesne. Assuming that 1750 was the date of Marcello's nativity, he was five years of age when Wolfe's intrepid redcoats stormed the Heights of Ab- raham and when Montcalm heroically wel- comed the death that shut from his vision the surrender of Quebec. He was fifteen when the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act which precipitated the American Revolution ; and when the Liberty Bell rang out the glad tidings of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 he was enlisting in the service of Padre Junipero Serra for a peaceful invasion of the valleys of Alta California. The chief, as Mar- cello was called, had passed his thirty-ninth year when Washington was elected President of the United States, and had he survived one year longer he might have participated in the first centennial of American liberty.

"Following out the natal-day hypothesis, Chief Marcello was nineteen years old when Napoleon Bonaparte was born, and when the French Revolution burst into throne-consum- ing flame this Indian was marching into a wilderness of the unknown west with the cowled Grey Friars of St. Francis. He was fifty-four when Napoleon, at the age of thirty- five, was crowned Emperor of the French ; fifty-six when Bonaparte reached the zenith of his career at Austerlitz, and sixty-five when the star of the Corsican genius went down in blood at Waterloo ; and, moreover, it may not prove uninteresting to note that this towering aboriginal was still conspicuous in the ranks of the living, having reached his hundred and twentieth year, when the third Napoleon, after overthrowing the French Republic, was himself overthrown at Sedan.

"Marcello (who had beheld California in its tribal stage and then successively under Spain, Mexico and the United States) ultimately surrendered to the inevitable; and, finally, be- fore this super-Indian looked his last upon the sun there was already reigning on the Aus- trian throne that ill-starred monarch of the House of Hapsburg, the late Emperor Francis Joseph, whose edict in 1914 set Europe ablaze and plunged the world into a war so colossal as to render small in comparison the sum total of destruction in all the wars of Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon.

"According to trustworthy authority, Chief Marcello was a veritable walking encyclope- dia of Mission history ; yet nobody in his time saw fit to make a transcript of his story and that possible source of infinitude of details of the early annals of Santa Clara is now shut off forever. Nobody living knows exactly where the first Santa Clara Mission stood.

Marcello knew the location ; but, odd as it may seem, little interest appears to have been taken in the subject until after Marcello's demise. When the book was eternally closed, the people became eager to read.

"This copper-skinned giant, in his prime, stood six feet two inches in his bare feet, weighed 250 pounds, was rawboned and pos- sessed of prodigious strength. There is no evidence other than unauthenticated stories handed down by the old Spanish families that he had assisted in the erection of the wooden frames of the original Mission on the banks of the Guadalupe, and it is not certain that he witnessed the destruction of the settlement by Hood in 1779; but there is plenty of corrobora- tion for his story that he aided Padre Jose An- tonio Murguia to build the adobe Mission on the second site, now marked by a simple white cross which stands some two hundred paces west of the Southern Pacific Railroad depot at Santa Clara.

"Anterior to the coming of the Friars-long before Marcello had set eyes on this fair scene- the Spanish Sergeant Ortega, at the behest of the renowned Captain Gaspar de Portola, in 1769, had led a band of scouts along the southern borders of San Francisco Bay and had described the future Santa Clara valley as 'The Plain of Oaks.' Subsequently, for a number of years, the region was desig- nated as the 'Meadow of San Bernardino,' and the beautiful name, Santa Clara was the happy selection of the illustrious Junipero Serra.

"While the honor of founding this Mission is shared conjointly by Padre Pena and Lieu- tenant Moraga, the famous Colonel d'Anza, who had led from Mexico two hundred colo- nists to form the village of San Francisco and the civilian nucleus of the Mission of Santa Clara, was regrettably deprived of the histor- ical prominence due him through a military exigency which compelled his sudden return to San Diego. Thus was his lieutenant left to celebrate the crowning of labors which owed their successful fruition to the masterful pre- liminary achievements of his brilliant superior officer.

"In 1827, the population of Santa Clara included 1,500 Indians, and the common prop- erty was 15,000 cattle, as many sheep, and 2,800 horses. The lands reserved for the na- tive converts who accepted a settled life ex- tended from the Guadalupe to the summit of the mountain range on the west, a domain of 80,000 acres, exempt from taxation during Spanish rule. Under Mexican authority, the Missions were secularized and plundered, and there soon remained only a vestige of their once prosperous communities.

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"Marcello had acted as foreman of native laborers who constructed the Alameda under the direction of Padre Jose Viader, the assist- ant of the venerable Padre Magin Catala, at the dawn of the nineteenth century. When his years had told a hundred, the aged chief found pleasure in traversing the foliage- canopied league which separates San Jose from Santa Clara, and delighted in entertaining fel- low pedestrians with tales of the days when the great willow trees, which in summer af- forded impenetrable shade along the winding road, had in their infancy been tenderly nursed by him and his companions after the slips had been borne to the Camino Real in bundles on the backs of tawny laborers. He described how the trees had been planted in three rows extending all the way from the second Mission site to the second site of the Pueblo San Jose, and pointed out with his staff the courses of the long zanjas or ditches which carried water from the Guadalupe to the nursling willows.

"The destruction of the second Mission by an earthquake in 1818 led to the selection of the third site, on which recently the imposing structures of the University of Santa Clara have been reared. Of the third Mission build- ings, the old church alone remains, and of this church Marcello-still vigorous at the age of seventy, straight as a poplar, was the over- seer of construction. The Mission church has undergone many changes and alterations, butt it still retains the original altar, the unique Indian paintings and the impressive wooden crucifix celebrated in Charles Warren Stod- dard's miracle story of the sainted Magin Catala-El Padrecito Santo; and from its ma- jestic towers, the historic bells, presented to Santa Clara by King Carlos V-bells, with music voices that have never faltered-still summon the faithful to devotion, still charm the air morning, noon and evening with their silvery prelude to the aspirations of the An- gelus.

"Marcello loved these bells, and doubtless they recalled to his memory many a face and many a voice and many a scene of a vanished aged. At their ropes his stout arms had toiled full many a time. They knelled his passage from the house of clay; and, if spirits of the dead are conscious of the things done in the abode of the quick, the soul of the chief must find joy in the prayers that rise to heaven at the nightly bell-call to DeProfundis.

"With the sequestration of the Missions, the large majority of the Indians dispersed to the surrounding hills and again became wedded to the savage life. Marcello was more fortunate for a period, but he, too, fell from his high estate. He was ninety-six years old when, in 1846, Governor Pio Pico granted him a veri- table principality known as the Ulistac rancho,

situated between Santa Clara and the San Francisco Bay. It was a landed estate worthy of a chief, and Marcello became exceedingly vain of his reputed royal descent. The shadow of war fell on the country and, when the shadow passed, a new flag-the Stars and Stripes-floated over California. Then Mar- cello, in his ignorance of law and in his blind eagerness to obtain the wherewithal to satisfy his cravings for worldly pleasures introduced by reckless newcomers, for a few paltry pieces of sordid gold, signed away to a land-grabber all his vast domain. It was then divided into small farms, and years afterward. Marcello was accustomed to plod from house to house in the sovereignty he had lost, to request and to receive food and raiment from his suc- cessors, whimsically regarding such favors not as a charity but as a right.

"At the age of a hundred the chief was forced to content himself with a humble cabin donated by a generous farmer in a remote sec- tion of Pio Pico's grant. In gratitude for Marcello's early services to the Padres, and eager to make comfortable the old chief's de- clining days, the Jesuit Fathers of Santa Clara, apprised of his hardship, invited him to abide permanently under their roof. The big chief, however, had discovered an aversion for any suggestion of celibacy. He had heard the call of the world, as it were, and his aboriginal na- ture was again dominant.

"Far back in Mission days, seeds of Chris- tian virtue had been planted in the soul of Marcello. In the half-century since the de- struction of the Mission, that seed had been sealed up in the dark breast of the Indian, dry and unnurtured, like the seed in the old church wall. For half a century the chief had pursued the way of the world in flagrant dis- regard of Mission precept and example. At length, in extreme old age, the spiritual seed, dormant for fifty years in this son of the wil- derness, responded to the nurturing tears of repentance and flowered under the smile of Divine mercy, and Marcello passed away with the comforting hope that, in a better sphere, he would rejoin the holy Padres in immortal life. Ninety-eight years in the Santa Clara Valley must have confused Marcello's memory with their procession of changing scenes and characters: First, the savage gives way be- fore the conquering Caucasian ; next, the Mis- sion rises where the wigwam stood; then, the forests fade, and spire and dome appear, as in a dream, and, by what Ruskin terms the 'art of kings and king of arts,' civilization conjures fabulous riches from earth's hidden cells.

'Where stalked the bronze-skinned brave In savage pride of power.

The paleface treads the Indian's grave.'

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"Marcello came, in 1777, a stranger to a strange land, and again, at the last, in 1875, still more of a stranger in a land stranger than of old, he crosses life's divide, hopeful of rest after a strenuous day. The red man disap- pears from view. The paleface garners the earth and, with his monuments of trade, usurps the upper spaces of the air ; and where, for nearly a century, this Indian colossus flour-

ished, like a mighty oak, pitting its knotty bulk against the ravages of time and the ele- ments -- where, for ages, his striking figure was as familiar as the gray adobes and the Spanish tiles-the people of today, save for a few lit- erary pilgrims groping among the dustheaps of California history, know not that there ever existed such a being as Marcello, super-Indian of the Santa Clara Mission."

CHAPTER XXXII.

Palo Alto and Leland Stanford Jr. University-The Rapid Growth of One of the Progressive Towns of Santa Clara County-The Location and Uses of a Great Educational Institution.

Palo Alto, nineteen miles northwest of San Jose, is a city of homes. It has that air of solid, substantial, quiet comfort which is the ideal atmosphere of the home-loving. At the same time it is enlivened by the presence of a great university. Its beautiful lawns and trees, its gardens of flowers, fruits and vegetables, its clean, shady streets, are elements that con- tribute generously to the delight and satisfac- tion of the citizens. Within driving distance of Palo Alto are many points of particular in- terest, which are reached by roads through valley or over mountains and foothills. To these advantages are added others: an even and comfortable climate, enabling one to live out of doors practically the year through ; educational opportunities that are not ex- celled anywhere; nearness to San Francisco (only one hour's ride) : a variety of religious, civic and social relationships.

Palo Alto is located on the Peninsula, twen- ty-eight miles from San Francisco, Ain the northern part of the famed Santa Clara Valley .. The southern arm of the Bay of San Fran- cisco is two miles to the east, and on the west, twenty miles distant, is the Pacific Ocean, with the Santa Cruz Mountains rising in forested beauty between and protecting the valley from ocean fogs.

The average summer temperature is seventy degrees ; that of the winter is fifty-five de- grees. The nearness to the ocean prevents extremes of cold in the winter and of heat in the summer. The skies are habitually sunny and bright all months of the year; there are not many days when the sun is hidden longer than a few hours at a time. The average rain- fall is 19.5 inches. The city of Palo Alto owes its existence to Stanford University. With the opening of University Avenue from the quadrangle to the Southern Pacific Rail- way, it was recognized that here was the lo- cation for the college city. The first house

was built in 1891, the year the university opened for instruction.

From the beginning Palo Alto has grown steadily. Its municipal policies have always been progressive and its affairs have been con- servatively administered in a most thorough- going. businesslike fashion. As a result a beautiful city has been built, and all that is good in a modern municipality is here. The businesslike methods of administration are shown by the low tax rate and the low cost of public-service products.

Palo Alto was incorporated in 1894 and soon installed a municipal water system, a muni- cipal power plant, and a complete sanitary sewer system. These enterprises have been conducted with marked success and for some years gave a large net income. Then the policy was adopted of furnishing water, light and power at cost, which has resulted in the lowest rates charged by any city in the bay region. The bonds issued for these enterprises are cared for from the gross income and re- quire no tax upon property. The actual bonded indebtedness of the city (aside from the self-sustaining bonds) is only one per cent of the assessed valuation, and the tax rate is exceptionally low. The city has acquired a municipal garbage destructor and now owns a municipal gas system.

The city government is based upon a spe- cial charter granted by the state legislature. The power is centralized in the hands of a council of fifteen members holding office for six years, five retiring every two years. They are the only elective officers, thus insuring a short ballot. This council appoints a board of works, a board of safety, and a library board, also such administrative officers as city clerk, auditor, treasurer, police judge, attor- ney, and tax collector. The board of public works selects a city engineer, who, because of the wide extent of his jurisdiction, is virtually a city business manager. The board of public

STANFORD UNIVERSITY QUADRANGLE

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safety appoints the chief of police and the health officer. In the charter are provisions for the initiative, referendum and recall.

The fire department is provided with an auto fire and chemical engine of the latest de- sign. Besides the principal fire houses at the city hall, there are four outlying stations, each furnished with fire-fighting apparatus and manned by volunteer companies. The Game- well fire alarm system covers the entire mu- nicipal territory. The insurance companies recognize the efficiency of this department by establishing low rates.

A modern health department is conducted by a full-time health officer holding a univer- sity degree in public health. The department has a well equipped laboratory for diagnosis, and analysis of milk, water and foods. Dairy cows are tuberculin-tested, and the milk sup- ply is exceptionally clean and wholesome. The death rate has steadily declined, in 1918 reaching the very low rate of 6.3 per 1,000 of population.

A large part, about seventy per cent, of the streets of the city are well paved, and side- walks are provided on all the streets. A11 sewer and water pipes are laid in advance of street work, so that streets are not torn up after paving is done. A model system of street lighting serves the entire city. The spaces along the sidewalks are parked, and along the front of the city the railway is bor- dered for a mile with a mass of blossoms. Nooks that form natural parks exist along San Francisquito Creek, which half encircles the city, and a beautiful strip of twenty-five acres between Palo Alto and Stanford campus is leased by the city.

At least two important manufacturing con- cerns have already recognized the town's sig- nal advantages, and at present the Boden Au- tomatic Hammer Company is operating a suc- cessful plant in the Stanford Irrigating Tract, one of the suburbs of Palo Alto ; and the Fed- eral Wireless Telegraph Company has erected a large building on the strip of land between Palo Alto and the State Highway to house the growing business of its manufacturing en- terprise, which has been in operation for sev- eral years. The famous Palo Alto Stock Farm has been reopened on Stanford land adjoining the university, for the rearing of thoroughbred cattle instead of horses.

Soon after the United States declared war against Germany, Palo Alto was selected as one of the training camps for the national army. After the war the camp was abandoned and in 1920 the land was cut up into lots and offered for sale. From Palo Alto southward extends that wonderful fruit belt of California known as the Santa Clara Valley. In this territory are raised one-half of all the prunes

produced in the United States ; no other county in the United States raises so many cherries or so many apricots. Besides these leaders are produced grapes, peaches, pears, apples, plums, olives and berries on a commercial basis. From this splendid source the resident of Palo Alto has, at producers' prices, the best that California grows. All along the penin- sula from San Francisco southward, are great vegetable gardens that are worked summer and winter. Thus vegetables are plentiful and fresh, and their cost is low.

Palo Alto is on the Coast line of the South- ern Pacific railway, fifty to sixty minutes from San Francisco, and has. over twenty trains each way daily. There are at the present time about two hundred commuters, who do busi- ness in San Francisco and with their families make their homes in Palo Alto. The town is also the terminus of the Peninsular interurban electric line, with its main line to San Jose and branch lines to Stanford University, Sara- toga and Los Gatos, by way of Los Altos.

Inside the present city limits there are 7,000 people ; the immediately contiguous suburban centers of Stanford campus, North Palo Alto, Ravenswood and Stanford Acres have not less than 3,000 more; the country tributary to Palo Alto, north, south and west, will num- ber at least 5,000. Here, then, is the center of a population of 15,000 people. The population may be divided into two general classes-those who are permanently or temporarily located at Palo Alto, to enjoy its educational and cli- matic advantages, and those who are perma- nently engaged in business or agricultural en- terprises. In this latter class are a great many whose business or professional interests are in San Francisco, but whose homes are in Palo Alto.

The State Highway has brought about an- tomobile transportation both for freight and passengers, operating between Palo Alto and San Jose and San Francisco a regular hourly schedule.

The land between Palo Alto and the Bay of San Francisco has great advantages for the raising of strawberries, celery and garden seeds. Strawberries ripen from April to De- cember and the yield is from $600 to $1,000 per acre. Celery is shipped in carloads. Palo Alto celery and Palo Alto strawberries have a special rating for quality in the San Francisco market reports There are immense possibili- ties for developing market gardens in the vicinity of Palo Alto, as it is one of the rare spots in the world where the best grades of vegetable and flower seeds can be grown. The production of onion seed is one of the most profitable industries ; sweet peas, radishes, cel- ery and other seeds are grown near the city. Farming and dairying are successfully car-

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ried on. Much fertile land is already in orch- ards, averaging about ten acres to a family. Poultry raising is often combined with the fruit industry.

The public school system of Palo Alto is one of the chief interests of the people, with the result that the schools are among the best in the state. The city has forty-nine in its teaching force, twenty-two of whom are employed in the high school. Five teachers serve as supervisors in drawing, music, man- ual training, domestic science and penman- ship. There is a magnificent series of new buildings, costing $250,000, for the Palo Alto Union High School District, which includes Stanford and Mayfield. The high school, lo- cated as it is, adjacent to Stanford, empha- sizes preparation for the university. In addi- tion to this, however, provision is made for vocational subjects, such as commercial studies and the manual and household arts. Four years of instruction are afforded in the fine arts, giving four complete university credits. The courses in languages, history, English, mathematics and science are thor- ough and complete.

The high school is fully accredited by all the universities and normal schools on the coast, and also by such Middle West and East- ern institutions as the University of Michigan and Smith College. The activities fostered by the high school consist of athletics, dramatics, debating, and the school paper-The Madrono.

Palo Alto has a Carnegie library containing over 10,000 volumes, selected by discerning and well-trained librarians. Any person can borrow these books upon practically the same basis as those who live within the city limits.

The saloon and the blind pig have never existed, so that the police department does not occupy a prominent position in the city's administration. In addition to provisions in Palo Alto's city charter, every deed to land contains a clause prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. All leading Christian denominations are represented : Bap- tist organized 1893, Presbyterian organized 1893, Methodist Episcopal organized 1894. All Saints (Episcopal) organized 1894, Christian organized 1896, St. Thomas Aquinas (Roman Catholic) organized 1900, First Congregation- al organized 1900, First Church of Christ, Scientist, organized 1900, Unitarian organized 1905. There is an active inter-church federa- tion of the six evangelical churches.

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History of Santa Clara County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 53

Author: Sawyer, Eugene Taylor, 1846- Publication date: 1922 Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co. Number of Pages: 1928

Author: Sawyer, Eugene Taylor, 1846-
Publication date: 1922
Publisher: Los Angeles : Historic Record Co.
Number of Pages: 1928