Issue date: October 14, 1998

One to grow on: On its 75th birthday, Atherton celebrates its past and looks ahead One to grow on: On its 75th birthday, Atherton celebrates its past and looks ahead (October 14, 1998)

By JENNIFER DESAI

The party's a little late this year: while Atherton is celebrating its 75th birthday over a month after its date of incorporation, history buffs know things could be worse.
The town could be celebrating its birthday along with Menlo Park.
On August 20, 1923, several Atherton men bolted from a meeting with Menlo Park representatives in what would become the famous "race for the courthouse" to establish a residential community of large lots which would be distinct from the more mercantile Menlo Park.
And while much has changed in the 75 birthdays since the town's September 12 incorporation, much has stayed the same. There is still no commercial district in Atherton; in fact, there are still no streets at all -- just the lanes, avenues, ways, and roads the town planners stipulated in the beginning. The original parcels of land may have been subdivided, but the idea of large lots lives on in the town's one-acre-per-lot ordinance. The houses are screened by lush foliage still, and while roads are somewhat less rutted than in 1923, they remain potholed and pastoral.
Atherton residents like it that way. "It's a very private area," says one resident. "People can live here and, because of the size of the lots, live very quietly and privately if they choose."
As Atherton faces the next 75 years, most residents seem to think the main challenge will be maintenance: maintaining the rural character of the town as surrounding communities build up and bring traffic; maintaining town staff and facilities; and maintaining a balance between the old Atherton, and newer families moving in. "When we moved here from the Midwest, there was something about this town; it was like an island," says Atherton Councilman Bob Huber. "I think the key issue is: how do we maintain the character of our town in the midst of the booming Midpeninsula?"
The past

Before Atherton proper was Atherton, it was Fair Oaks -- a community of summer estates built by San Francisco businessmen and their families who traveled south to enjoy the relatively warm, fog-free summers. The roads were dusty by summer, and muddy by winter, when most of the families returned to the city, leaving their servants in charge.

The village of Menlo Park, which had been established in 1863, housed many workers from the estates and the railroad.

In 1923, Menlo Park tried to persuade Atherton to agree to incorporation; because of the wording of an earlier agreement between the two communities, founders of soon-to-be-Atherton realized that if they wanted to incorporate without Menlo Park, they'd have to be first to arrive at the county seat. Hence the race to the Redwood City Courthouse, a strategic piece of rudeness that won Fair Oaks its independence as a town.

Atherton became the official name for the town when founders discovered that "Fair Oaks" had been snapped up by a Sacramento County town in 1912. The rechristening was meant to honor Faxon Dean Atherton, whose 611-acre tract of land was one of the first settlements in the area. Named after his wife's native Valparaiso in Chile, his home, Valparaiso Park, was in the center of the tract bounded by what are now Atherton and Valparaiso avenues. Five of his children, whose names were later given to avenues, built houses nearby.

Other prominent settlers include Thomas Selby, a mayor of San Francisco who built his estate, Fair Oaks, in 1863; John T. Doyle, who built his home in the late 1860s along Middlefield Road where Menlo-Atherton High School now stands; Edward E. Eyre, who built his home in 1876; Senator Charles Felton, who built Felton Gables; and James C. Flood, a former saloon keeper in San Francisco who made a fortune in mining stocks and bought hundreds of acres along Middlefield Road in 1876. Demolished in 1934, the Flood Estate lives on in the antiques and statues salvaged from the great house, many of which decorate homes in the Lindenwood neighborhood that replaced it.

After incorporation a board of trustees was established; since 1923, 43 residents have served on what is now a five-member Town Council. In 1927, the town attempted to raise a bond for $35,000 to build a Town Hall. The vote was 186 in favor, 96 against -- two votes too few for the required two-thirds margin. The next year, a more conservative construction bond for $20,000 was approved, and construction commenced on the building that is now the council chambers and home to the heritage association.

Also in 1923, Atherton's police force was established. For the first five years, three non-salaried marshals led the police force, which was often a one-man patrol. In an oral history prepared by Atherton residents Sally Bush and Barbara Norris, former police chief Leroy Hubbard -- who joined the force in 1927 -- said burglary patrols were an important but informal police duty in the early days. If he saw anyone in town he didn't recognize, he'd go over and investigate. When people needed to reach a police officer, they telephoned the chief, who would then call another number that automatically turned on red lights set on telephone poles at Atherton Avenue and El Camino Real, Middlefield Road and Oak Grove Avenue, and Atherton Avenue and Selby Lane. Patrolling officers who saw the lights would know to call into the station. Mercifully, one-way radios were installed in police cars in 1934, to be replaced with two-way versions in 1939.

By the 1950s, Atherton was changing. In 1950 the census showed 3,591 residents, an 88 percent increase since 1940, and five times the 1923 population of 650. Also in 1950, a record building spurt of $5,072,535 topped the old record of $3,670,339 in 1948, according to a story in the former Palo Alto Times newspaper. In 1955, when floods drowned part of Atherton, the drainage district was formed and $900,000 committed to prevent future floods in a major public works project.

The first controversy over accessory structures -- an issue which proved equally contentious nearly 40 years later, when the Town Council proposed a change in zoning -- began innocuously enough in 1958, with a treehouse. At that time, the Town Council voted that a treehouse constructed by two small boys with their parents' help, was illegal. The boys' parents, Mr. and Mrs. Templeton, refused to take down the treehouse they'd built in front of their Camino al Lago house. The incident was widely publicized, and gubernatorial candidates Edmund G. Brown and William F. Knowland spoke out on behalf of treehouses and little boys, according to the Palo Alto Times. The treehouse was destroyed in a mysterious fire before the case could be resolved in court.

Also in 1958, a 22-acre tract which would become Holbrook-Palmer Park was bequeathed to Atherton by Olive Holbrook Palmer upon the death of her husband Silas. It became town property in 1963; subsequently the Atherton Dames and the Holbrook-Palmer Park Foundation formed to develop and improve facilities there.

The present

At 75, the town that one newspaper described as having been created to preserve the status quo, is still struggling to preserve its rural, peaceful character. Many of the issues the town has faced in its 75 years -- roads, drainage, and accessory structures in particular -- recur on Town Council agendas, while the town recently dealt with its latest building boom by putting up a portable building to expand its permit center. With 32 employees and the lion's share of the town's budget, the police force remains a perennial priority of residents. Volunteer groups still lovingly tend Holbrook-Palmer Park, and work to preserve the town's heritage trees. And of course, house-proud Athertonians still build stately houses that hark back to the days of the Selbys and Floods.

Atherton is a town of billionaires and ball players, with a population of about 7,500 and 11 schools within its borders; at an estimated 10,000, the school population outnumbers Atherton residents. Not that residents have it so bad: with the third-highest median home sales price in the state ($1,225,000 in July 1998, according to the California Association of Realtors), the town obviously has its charms.

"I've lived here nearly all my life," says Bob Franceschini, president of the Atherton Civic Interest League. "It hasn't changed all that much; it's just gotten a lot more expensive."