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Publication Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2003

Tales of Portola Valley

By Marion Softky
Almanac Staff Writer

"A Westerner is less a person than a continual adaptation. The West is less a place than a process."

-- Wallace Stegner

Dorothy Regnery should be proud.

Thirty years of meticulous work by the late Portola Valley historian -- she tracked archives, interviewed old-timers, and walked the land in search of long-gone homes, farms, or property lines -- has finally made its way into a book.

And the book is stunning. Portola Valley Town Historian Nancy Lund and short-story writer Pamela Gullard of Menlo Park have built on Mrs. Regnery's research to tell the stories of the people and issues that shaped today's still-rural town embedded in Silicon Valley. Lavish illustrations -- including paintings, drawings, photographs, and more than 100 historic pictures -- give a feel for early residents and their magnificent setting.

"We were encouraged to make it as beautiful as possible. It will be a long time before there's another," says Mrs. Lund.

"Life on the San Andreas Fault: A History of Portola Valley," by Nancy Lund and Pamela Gullard, will make its official debut this Saturday and Sunday, May 3 and 4, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Historic Schoolhouse in Portola Valley Town Center, 765 Portola Road.

In the 13 years since Mrs. Regnery died, the authors have put their own stamp onto her exhaustive research. They have converted often-dry archives into lively stories and vignettes of people forging lives and molding their environment.

"We both appreciate the story-telling side of history, and the detective work," says Mrs. Gullard during an interview at Tor and Nancy Lund's elegant Spanish-style house in the Oak Hills subdivision, carved out of the Ormondale Ranch, named for the famous 19th century race horse Ormonde. (The Portola Valley archives still treasure a few strands from his tail.)

Other colorful characters pop up in the book. There are special vignettes on Indian rebel Pomponio; the hermit of Jasper Ridge; and Black Chapete, who held forth at the bar at the Alpine Inn for decades around the turn of the century and was suspected of running a bawdy house. Mining engineer and cable car inventor Andrew Hallidie ran a tramway up the hill from near today's Christ Church, and built the first school in the village of Portola. San Francisco financier Herbert Law built mansions on the western hillside and grew herbs near Willowbrook for the patent medicine Viavi. And John Francis Neylan, lawyer for William Randolph Hearst and longtime University of California regent, sold land for The Sequoias senior complex and was suspected of making plans for developing Windy Hill; those plans helped spur Portola Valley's incorporation in 1964.

A common thread connects the descriptions and anecdotes in the book: how people used -- and abused -- the land they lived on. "Nancy has such a sense of the shape of history," says Mrs. Gullard.

From the Ohlones who used land as a common resource, through the Mexican "Californio" ranchers, down to today's subdividers and the builders of trophy houses, the use of land has been key to growth of the community. "This is the story of how people related to the land where they lived -- land which is beautiful and fragile," says Mrs. Lund.

"Life on the San Andreas Fault" concludes with two pages that tell how the town of Portola Valley has become an example to the world in its methods of controlling land uses to provide safety for people living among earthquake and landslide hazards.

The book gives credit to the late Dwight Crowder and other geologists, Town Planner George Mader, and almost 40 years of forward-looking volunteers who served on town councils, commissions and committees. It concludes, "A little California town, astride the mighty San Andreas Fault, has provided a model not only for the region and the state, but even for the planet."

Land use/water wars

Portola Valley -- named after Don Gaspar de Portola, who passed nearby on his way to discovering San Francisco Bay in 1769 -- became a commodity, owned by an individual, in 1834.

Then, Maximo Martinez, a retired soldier and later a councilman in San Jose, received the first Mexican land grant in San Mateo County. Rancho El Corte de Madera covered 13,316 acres, extending roughly between San Francisquito and Los Trancos creeks and up to Skyline.

Maximo and his wife, Damiana, built a house near the intersection of Alpine and Los Trancos roads, near today's Portola Valley Garage, and settled into farming life, raising cattle, horses and crops. They also had 15 children, seven of whom died young. A few of their descendants still live in the area.

Disputes over land and lawsuits heated up after California became part of the United States in 1848. "Yankees had a strong sense of boundaries," says Mrs. Gullard.

The first great resource in the valley was lumber. Workers cut -- by hand -- the giant redwoods that covered the hills, and teams of oxen hauled the huge logs down to the Bay. By early in the Gold Rush, most of the original forest was gone.

Villages started to spring up to house and serve the workers increasingly needed for farms and lumbering. Searsville boasted homes, saloons, hotels, and a school, until it was abandoned after 1891 to make way for the lake.

The Gold Rush also brought big country estates built by the tycoons, and hordes of immigrants from all over Europe. Cable car magnate Andrew Hallidie donated land for a school and village after the Searsville school closed in 1894. The village of Portola might have survived if the Hallidies hadn't absolutely prohibited the sale of alcohol. The village died.

As free spirits, speculators and entrepreneurs battled for land and water, surprising projects sprung up. Some tried to strike it rich hunting for gold, silver, coal or cinnabar. One gentleman farmer tried to build an empire on flax; another planted 10,000 mulberry trees to raise silkworms; and Herbert Law raised herbs for a patent medicine to cure female ailments.

Competition for land was fierce and often unscrupulous. Mrs. Gullard laughs, "They bought or swindled people out of land."

The fights over water were worse. In a land where it doesn't rain for six months every year, water is key. "Who controlled the creek was a very important issue," says Mrs. Lund. "People laid pipes around each other's property surreptitiously. They bought [water rights] through secret agents and dummy corporations.

"Water is still an issue in Portola Valley."

Portola Valley: the town

A whole new era started for Portola Valley after World War II, as young families moved out to build new lives in glamorous California.

The book describes the growth of neighborhoods and subdivisions from the big estates. There is a chapter on Ladera, which started as an idealistic planned community, growing out of the consumer cooperative movement under the leadership of the late Murray Luck.

The land was filling up, and developers' dreams were moving toward the open hills on the west side of town. New issues and perspectives were arising. "People were thinking about the need to balance individual rights to develop land with the community's need to preserve open space for the quality of life," says Mrs. Gullard.

By 1955, a group of far-seeing residents was beginning to think about the future of their community, and whether the rural qualities they valued could be preserved under the control of San Mateo County. They decided on incorporation as a way to control their destiny.

As the debate continued, Hearst lawyer Mr. Neylan sold a parcel of land on Portola Road for a senior complex -- now the Sequoias -- which would require a new sewer line. Many considered the sewer an invitation to growth.

"Finally, on June 23, 1964, a total of 1,061 of 1,457 intensively informed voters cast ballots in favor of incorporation," the book says. "The new town was finally created."

Three members of that original town council still live in Portola Valley: Bill Lane, Bob Brown, and Eleanor Boushey.

INFORMATION

** "Life on the San Andreas Fault: A History of Portola Valley" by Nancy Lund and Pamela Gullard. Scottwall Associates, San Francisco, California, 2003. $64.95, including tax.

** Starting May 5, this book will be available in local bookstores, Portola Valley Hardware, and the Konditorei in the Ladera Shopping Center. There will be sample copies and order forms at Portola Valley Town Hall and the library.

** Or send a check or money order to Spring Ridge Histories, 765 Portola Road, Portola Valley, CA 94028. Include $3.50 for postage and handling, or pick up books Mondays from 4 to 6 p.m. in Room One, Town Center. Check www.scottwallpub.com.