Announcing the publication of
With more than a hundred archival pictures
as well as contemporary photographs by Susan Thomas,
Sheldon "Woody" Woodward, Ken Gardiner and others.
Paintings by Jane Gallagher, Herb Dengler, and Patrticia Akay.
There are special places where oak trees cast their dark shadows
on hot summer days, where ferns and wild trillium border springtime creeks,
where wildflowers scatter color across meadows early in the year.
— Almanac, July 10 1974
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Those of us who live in or near Portola Valley all have our favorite places, images and memories of the beautiful, peaceful place that is a refuge, a wilderness of open space, a tranquil island in the ocean of stress, work, traffic and confusion just over the hill.
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Springtime poppies, buttercups and blue-eyed grass sprinkling the hillsides above roads, Small frogs ribbetting through the summer nights, Fog spilling over the crest of the western hills at twilight, slowly blurring the firs and redwoods and hiding the bare grasslands of Windy Hill.
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But this special place was not always so peaceful. It has a history, too — a history of struggle, ambition, almost superhuman effort, of triumph and failure, conflict, and determined idealism that went into the creation of the town we know today. For over two hundred years, this rugged, fertile valley plagued by earthquake and drought has attracted colorful people with high hopes who could live with uncertainty. Since the eighteenth century, idealists and scoundrels, schemers and inventors have made and lost fortunes, and then picked themselves up and started over in this beautiful town. Real estate and water rights have been traded furiously, whether through legitimate sales, sweet talk, swindles, or legal wrangling.
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Maximo Martinez, who owned all of Portola Valley — more than 14,000 acres — who founded a small dynasty there, and who couldn’t write his name. |
Just a few of the fascinating characters who have shaped Portola Valley:
Andrew Hallidie, inventor of San Francisco’s cable cars, who built a funicular tramway from Portola Road to Skyline; he gave land in 1890s for the village of Portola and the 1894 school (sold in 1950 for $10 and razed).
