Issue date: November 03, 1999
By Dick Barbour
Those who received a passing grade in English history will recall that Runnymede was the site where King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215. Yet those who have been around these parts for three score and more years will tell you that it was right over there in East Palo Alto, just south of the present Menlo Park city limit in the vicinity where University and Bay Road meet.
Our Runnymede was the project of Charles Weeks, a Hoosier farm boy who came to California to nurture a dream. Weeks carefully planned and promoted a colony of small poultry-oriented farm-home sites as a cooperative venture under the name of Runnymede Poultry Farms. The time was during, and shortly after, World War I.
He invited "... all those who are interested in intensive production of small acreage ... those who love nature and enjoy plants and animals, and especially those who contemplate a state of higher independence on the land."
Earlier, after graduating from De Pauw, Mr. Weeks worked as a waiter in Chicago and New York. Once, having visited a poultry show in Madison Square Garden, he was hooked, and spent several months visiting farms and studying poultry husbandry. He moved west seeking a combination of mild weather, good soil, and plentiful water.
He checked locations in, or near, Spokane, Seattle, Portland, and Petaluma, finding that the industry at the latter location seemed to lack good management techniques. Then one September day he got off at the Palo Alto station, and, after three unrewarding starts in nearby orchard areas, acquired 10 acres for $400 and called it the Weeks Poultry Ranch.
After 12 years of hard work and study, Weeks developed a profitable operation that included, in addition to poultry, rabbits, vegetables, and fruit trees grown on trellises all designed to make intensive use of limited acreage.
Then came the dream -- Runnymede, the Charles Weeks poultry colony "of neat country homes filled with sincere earnest, sober people." He proclaimed the advantages of the climate, the soil, the water and the schools, including, Stanford University " ... easily reached by the University street car line."
Visitors were invited to public demonstrations, lectures, and poultry schools. Interest grew and soon the first 150-acre subdivision was taken up, another 135 acres was opened, while a third 130-acre subdivision "formerly known as Woodland Place or Ravenswood" bordering on San Francisquito creek, had been acquired.
Colonists owned the warehouse as a cooperative venture and bought feed and supplies at cost. A club house was built and meetings were held to discuss poultry operating techniques. Eggs were collected and marketed under a cooperative arrangement. Also, the colony was to keep the best blooded livestock cooperatively to aid "small farmers to breed the best." An annual fair awarded prizes to pure-bred livestock and choice fruits and vegetables."
Charles Weeks' dream for Runnymede as a colony of small intensive farms operating cooperatively could not withstand the encroachment of time and the conditions imposed by the Great Depression and urbanization. Yet remnants of that dream remain. Today two streets in the East Palo vicinity are appropiately named Weeks and Runnymede.
Ed Barbour wrote this column for the Menlo Park Historical Association. It was published March 9, 1982.
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