Reviews
Title: Home Home Community Historian leads readers down memory lane with new book on old Los Altos Author: Mary Beth Hislop Pubisher: Los Altos Town Crier Date: 3/30/2010 For every person lamenting the disappearance of apricot, French plum and cherry orchards that used to line the Los Altos landscape, there's another mourning the loss of golden grasses that used to cover the valley's hills as far as the eye could see. And though orchards were already here and he never saw firsthand those golden pastures dappled with heritage oak trees, Los Altos resident Don McDonald leads readers on a stroll down memory lane in his new book, "Early Los Altos and Los Altos Hills" (Arcadia Publishing, 2010). The 128-page book is a photo-portrayal of Los Altos spanning 100 years, from 1850 to 1950. From Los Altos' and Los Altos Hills' origins to the Great Depression, World War II and unprecedented postwar growth, McDonald's pictorial history took a year to complete. Although Los Altos Town Crier publisher Paul Nyberg compiled "Portrait of Los Altos: A Century of Photos" (Select Books, 1992), many historical photos have been located and archived since then. It was time for an update, McDonald said. McDonald became interested in the area's history when he moved into his Yerba Santa Avenue home in 1970, wondering what existed before the home was built. "I talked with an old-timer down the street and learned there were many inter-marriages between families (living) on Pine and Cherry streets, in a 6-acre area," he said. "I got interested." In the early part of the 20th century, Los Altos Grammar School was the only school in the area for children and teens. The students grew up together, many married and established their own families in the area. McDonald began listening a lot to residents' oral histories, collecting, compiling and publishing several stories about the past in the Town Crier and submitting information to the Los Altos History Museum, where he volunteers. So when museum Executive Director Laura Bajuk approached McDonald with the idea of chronicling Los Altos' history on paper, it was a project he couldn't resist. Although McDonald's account begins in 1850, it really takes flight in the early 1900s, when Southern Pacific's legendary Paul Shoup the "father of Los Altos" decided the area would be an ideal place to situate a train depot for rails connecting Los Gatos and San Francisco. Was it settlers in the area or the train that came first? "It's hard to say which came first the chicken or the egg," McDonald quipped. For McDonald's book, the text came first 36,000 words later whittled to 18,000 chronologically detailing Los Altos' humble beginnings, from fruit-producing ranches, Main Street merchants and the darker history of the Japanese internment during WWII. "That was 10 percent of the population," he said of the internment. "That was a big blow." McDonald worked with Bajuk and the museum's Lisa Robinson to match photos to the story. Although the Los Altos History Museum shares credit with McDonald for the book, many photos were gleaned from other sources Mountain View's History Center and private collections such as Florence Fava's (Fava chronicled Los Altos Hills' history in the 1970s) and friends. "It was teamwork," he said. "It couldn't have been done without them." Twenty-five of the book's photos have never been published before, which will make it special for Los Altos history buffs, with captions that carry forward the story. There are many photos that didn't make the cut. "(Acquiring) Paul Shoup's 1930 cover photo as p
