Santa Clara Valley

“ From the summit we look down the northeastern slope of the mountains, upon the wide and beautiful Valley of Santa Clara, and the blue Bay of San Francisco shimmering-in the distance through the light veil of autumnal vapor which hangs over it, and drapes with a robe of royal purple the Valley of Alameda and the mountain heights beyond. ”

“ To the northward is the prolific fruit region, the Santa Clara Valley, where Mission Santa Clara was founded in 1777. The city of this valley is San José, with twenty thousand people, distantly surrounded by mountains, and, like all these places, a popular resort. The Calaveras Mountains are to the eastward, and here, on Mount Hamilton, twenty-six miles southeast, is the Lick Observatory, at forty-two hundred feet elevation. ”

“ Through Santa Clara Valley. — Arrival at San José. — Old Friends. — Semi-tropical Climate. — An Excursion to the Stars. — The Lick Observatory. — Our Journey There. — Sunset on the Summit. — With the Great Telescope. — The Tomb of James Lick. — The Midnight Ride Down the Mountain.
After leaving Palo Alto, our journey revealed to us an ideal Californian landscape. We passed through the lovely Santa Clara Valley. Rich cultivation met our eye on every side, interspersed with fine forest trees, all hemmed in by the ranges of the surrounding mountains. ”

“ The birds in California do not build nests. They build ranches.
Most of the way along the Santa Clara Valley our tires glided upon an arrow-straight, unbelievably smooth stretch of magnificent automobile road, which—when it is completed—will extend without a break from the Oregon line to the Mexican line, and will be the finest, costliest, best thoroughfare to be found within the boundaries of any state of the Union, that being the scale upon which they work out their public-utility plans in the West. ”

“ When the Spaniards passed through this valley, they were not slow to recognize in it one of those favored spots on the earth’s surface where climate and soil unite to produce the highest results. So here they founded two missions, one at Santa Clara, and one at San José.
Santa Clara (St. Clara) , stands in one of the most fertile valleys in California, which is equivalent to saying in the whole world, and is about forty-six miles south-southeast of San Francisco. The mission was founded by Padres Peña and Murguia, January 12, 1777. ”

“ The high, rugged mountains of Santa Clara and Santa Cruz, robed in deep-green chemisal and crowned with feathery redwoods, bounded the view on the south, and made a fitting frame for the glorious picture before us. What wonder that we gazed noon the enchanting scene, fairly reveling in the feast of beauty and sublimity nature had spread before us with such a lavish hand, until the gathering shadows of night admonished us that it was time to remount our impatient steeds and descend once more to the valley! ”

“ THE GENTLEMAN FROM SISKIYOU.
In Gilroy, when the sun lies hot and yellow on the roofs of the frame-built houses and the wide meadows, waving with grain or cropped short by herds of grazing cattle, the eye turns instinctively to the mountains, where the dreamy mid-day atmosphere seems to gather coolness from the dark woods that crown its summit.
"Over that way lie the Hot Springs," says one or the other, pointing out the direction to the stranger who comes for the first time to Santa Clara Valley. ”

“ It gave me a nearer impression of the Santa Clara Valley and its life. My visit was to a fruit ranch entirely given over to the growth of prunes. The part of the great plain where I was, is cut up into small farms, and these are tended, usually, by the members of the family. The work is limited and light. After the trees are planted, nature, pretty much, does all the rest. When the fruit is ripe is the time of most applied and constant labor. ”

“ Wish it wasn't so blame far from everywhere."
"But men can come here by water," suggested Farquharson.
"That depends where they start from. Quite a journey to here by water from Saint Louis, Missouri."
"No farther than England is from California. Brown, it would not surprise me if, before many years, shiploads of people from England will be tilling farms right here in this Santa Clara valley."
They were coming into the grounds of the Calderon hacienda. The white buildings gleamed in the morning light. The rolling hills formed a green background. ”

“ During the morning we saw a stately pair of wild pigeons winging their swift flight in and out of some tall pine trees.
Water High in San Joaquin Valley.
The San Joaquin river was very high and had overflowed thousands of acres of land. Our road, slightly elevated, passed for miles through an inland sea. To reach Los Banos, we made a wide detour to the left. We crossed the Pacheco Pass into the Santa Clara valley. ”

“ Her special symbol is the lily, peculiarly appropriate for the patroness of the ever-blooming Santa Clara Valley.
SAN JOSÉ
San José (St. Joseph) , enjoys the distinction of having been the first white colony planted in the state by the Spaniards, although when we read the complaints of the padres concerning the highly undesirable character of its first settlers, recruited mainly from the criminal classes of Sonora, the distinction would seem to be of rather a doubtful sort. ”

“ Then we turn to the north once more and enter another valley, the valley of Santa Clara. The towns become larger and more frequent, the country more developed. Orchards and fruit-groves are frequently seen. At the roadsides, built up on trestles, are great water-tanks that are used for irrigation. ”

“ Never by word or act shall I acknowledge your authority in this valley of Santa Clara."
Señor Mendoza smiled. His equanimity was not easily upset.
"Good reverend padre, hear me. Your fathers did, indeed, redeem this country and its savage tribes. A mighty work surely has been done. But, because of freeing the natives from paganism, should you hold this vast province in fee simple? Is it right that a score of monks should own the land from San Diego to Yerba Buena? ”

“ There are also numerous inclosures, for cultivation, by willow hedges. The soil, when properly tilled, appears to be highly productive. This mission is situated about two miles from the shore of a small bay or indentation of the coast, on the edge of a plain or valley watered by the Rio Santa Clara, which empties into the Pacific at this point. A chain of small islands, from ten to twenty miles from the shore, commences at Santa Barbara, and extends south along the coast, to the bay of San Pedro. These islands present to the eye a barren appearance. ”

“ No attempt is made to segregate the entries by year, since we are interested in the total, not the annual increment. Certain particular problems deserve comment.
The San Francisco record is very precise, since it allocates each neophyte to his rancheria, or at least to the local region of his origin. Santa Clara, however, as noted previously, gives no indication of the origin before 1805. By this time, all the local natives had been exhausted and only valley tribes are mentioned. It is probable that from 1777 to 1789 the natives in the immediate vicinity were being converted. ”

“ The baptism records of the missions of San Jose and Santa Clara to which reference is made above include for each gentile village a breakdown of men, women, and children. These data have been already discussed in connection with the rancherias on Lake Tulare and it has been shown that, if proper correction is made for the sex ratio, men and women each contributed 41.8 per cent of the population and children 16.4 per cent. ”

“ Going down this stream bed for two leagues one finds another creek [the fourth] which runs from between two hills and has no land fit for cultivation. In addition to the creeks mentioned there is another [the fifth] which has land good for crops and could support an irrigation ditch. There are also in the vicinity some swamps.
The position of the area explored this morning is as follows. From north to south it is surrounded by hills which make a semicircle. It is seven leagues distant from the end of the lake and the plains are much larger than those of the Mission Santa Clara. ”

“ The latter people have just approached us with much fear and with a tendency to prevaricate. Although they know that they have in their village Christians from Santa Clara, they deny it and furthermore declare that they will never again admit any [Christian fugitives] . If it were not for the nuisance it would cause us, the Lieutenant says he would flog them, but on the return trip he will do so if things go as they have this time. In the afternoon, after having dismissed all the wild Indians, we set forth in the same direction, and traveled two leagues. ”

“ The missionaries in the Virgin and Santa Clara valleys found their remoteness inconvenient; accordingly a settlement was made on the Santa Clara where they could live among the Indians, and on December 1, Jacob Hamblin, Thales Haskell, Ira Hatch, Samuel Knight and A. P. Hardy established the nucleus of a permanent colony. Two weeks later Rufus Allen and Hyrum Burgess left Harmony for Tonaquint on the Santa Clara near its junction with the Virgin River where they built three log cabins. The missionaries helped the Indians construct substantial dams and ditches for diverting irrigation water. ”

“ There are but three regions in the United States in which cavate lodges are known to occur in considerable numbers, viz, on San Juan river, near its mouth; on the western side of the Rio Grande near the pueblo of Santa Clara; and on the eastern slope of San Francisco mountain, near Flagstaff, Arizona. To these may now be added the middle Verde region, from the East Verde to a point north of Verde, Arizona. ”

“ We ride on through oaks and fields of wild mustard until we reach the Mission of Santa Clara within three miles of the city. It is a pretty place, a church built in the old Spanish style with most grim looking saints pictured on the walls and some very nice adobe houses, with a sprinkling of Yankee cottages. Groups of Mexicans and Indians are lounging about basking in the sunshine; the only moving active thing is our little party as we canter gaily through the village. But I fear this long ride will weary you, so we will make haste to Pueblo. ”

“ Everything savors of neglect; only a few dwellings are outwardly new, but within the habitations are comparatively clean; while the population, through frequent mixture with wandering Indians—the Utes, Apaches, and Navajos—are taller and more slenderly built, if not stronger, than the ordinary pueblo Indians of New Mexico.
Santa Clara is situated on a sandy prominence{290} which overlooks the course of the Rio Grande del Norte from a height of about fifty feet. The village is not more than five hundred paces in a straight line from the river-bank. ”

“ To the southward the waters are not so extended, and the bay laves the garden of California in the beautiful vale of Santa Clara. Green islands adorn the bosom of these vast estuaries, and everywhere are found safe and commodious harbors.
Our anchorage was near the little village of Yerbabuena, five miles from the ocean, and within a short distance from the Franciscan Mission and Presidio of the old royalists. The site seems badly chosen, for although it reposes in partial shelter, beneath the high bluffs of the coast, yet a great portion of the year it is enveloped in chilling fogs ”

“ The first village we saw was Santa Clara, to our left, lying at the foot of some dark hills, with its white church and flat-roofed or no-roofed houses. There being no shade, frequently not a tree for leagues, the sun and dust very disagreeable, and became more so as the day advanced. Here it came to pass, that, travelling rapidly over the hot and dusty plains, the wheels of our carriage began to smoke. ”

“ The Indian village—or, as it is usually called in New Mexico, the pueblo—of Santa Clara lies thirty miles north of the city of Santa Fé, on the Texas, Santa Fé & Northern Railroad. It is inhabited by about four hundred agricultural Indians of the Tehua tribe, whose one-and two-storied houses form two irregular quadrangles, surrounding two open places, called plazas. ”

“ Señora Valentino rode slowly along the way leading from Santa Clara to Pueblo San José. Willow trees lined the edge of the road, lifting their featherly foliage in greeting to the morning sun. Yellow light filtered through and marked the interlacing plumes with myriad fairy figures in golden tints. The branches nodded and undulated in low-toned rhythm. Tempered breezes from the bay, sweet with the breath of virgin meadow, hung light-winged over this shaded alameda. Peons, men and women, worked in the vegetable gardens by the wayside, singing as they labored. ”

“ After this delightful visit we took the horse car to Santa Clara, and certainly the world cannot boast of a public route so redolent with beauty as this. Both sides of the road are shaded with trees of almost a century's growth; for this "Alameda" was planted by the Jesuit Fathers in 1799. These left the vines and olives of their native Spain, and planted upon the soil of their new home this grove, which was, doubtless, intended as a sacred haunt, never dreaming that its sanctity would be invaded by the sacrilegious sounds of modern civilization, and, above all, by the rumble of the horse car. ”

“ The streets are straight and wide, and there are many fine buildings. The oldest church is of the last third of the 18th century. The city is surrounded by fertile plains, which are cultivated in cane or devoted to grazing. ”