Auction brought prosperity to settlers
By John S. Baggerly
The Almond Grove lot auction of 1887 was no joke. It was a very serious business, highly unlike a Marx Brothers movie, Coconuts, which satirized the Florida land boom with a comic auction.
In the movie, Groucho, the auctioneer, enlists brother Chico as a shill to hype up the bidding.
But instead of backing off at the right moment, free-bidding Chico jacks the suckers right out of Groucho's trap. "Six thousand, seven thousand, what do I care, I got aplenty of numbers," laughs Chico as Groucho fumes.
It was no laughing matter when Harvey Wilcox, an orchardist of standing in the community, banged the gavel that September day.
Prosperity was in the air. The town was crowded with prospective buyers, coaxed to town by seductive advertising and a comfortable train ride.
There were 170 lots for sale that day, and by nightfall, Wilcox's gavel had rapped out 121 sales.
Los Gatos had incorporated a few months earlier in 1887, and hopes for good times in the new little town ran high.
Auctioneer Wilcox needed no Chico, no shill. Hadn't Los Gatos, later to be known as The Gem City of the Foothills, become a town of the sixth class with a population of almost 2,000 souls?
Sure, the town was optimistic. And why not? There was a rail line, and timber and fruit were being hauled out of the Santa Cruz Mountains by the trainload right before each citizen's eyes.
Los Gatos was becoming the gateway to Monterey Bay and sat just a few hours from San Jose, the county seat, which was reachable by horse and buggy. Early county seats were located so that a citizen could arrive there and return home by nightfall.
A mix of gentle weather, water and entrepreneurs was bringing one of the world's greatest orchard booms to the valley floor. There would be canneries in full steam and multistoried wineries, both private and cooperative, right here in Los Gatos.
Main Street was just that--the main street. Santa Cruz Avenue, then Santa Cruz Road, was coming to life, and the Los Gatos Cannery, serviced by a rail spur, would locate just behind where the Los Gatos Theater stands today.
And amid this atmosphere of success, Los Gatos was to have a major residential area for the first time--the Almond Grove Addition.
Most of all, Los Gatos had men of industry and vision--Bean, Tait, Massol, Wilder, Bachman, Nicholson--all remembered for the streets that bear their names. They were in on the "ground floor," and their properties couldn't miss.
Of course there were other visionaries, but this was the main body of developers who saw that the town would need homes.
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