Early Anglo Days in the Flatlands

Sherwood Hall, Timothy Hopkin's creekside summer estate in Menlo Park was damaged severely in the 1907 earthquake and was never occupied again. Hopkins moved his summer residence to the estate’s gatehouse, which still stands on Ravenswood Avenue. The estate occupied all of today’s Lindenwood neighborhood.

Early Anglo Days in the Flatlands

This is the seventh part of the story of the people who have lived on the banks of the San Francisquito Creek and its tributaries through the centuries. As loggers stripped the hillsides of redwoods in the upper reaches of the San Francisquito Creek watershed in the middle years of the nineteenth century, a busy shipping business developed on the bay near the creek’s mouth. In 1848, Isiah Woods built a home, a dairy, and a wharf that he called Ravenswood Landing because of all the birds there. Lester Cooley took over in 1868 and thereafter the wharf was called Cooley’s Landing.

On the San Mateo side, Jeremiah Clark purchased 200 acres and in 1874 constructed a thirty-foot wharf. After a few years, he leased to one C. G. Wilson, so the name changed to Wilson’s Landing. Wilson’s idea was to store grain, prunes and potatoes in a large warehouse and wait for the best possible price before shipping the goods to San Francisco.

A little town had begun around Isiah Woods’ Ravenswood.  It was populated mostly by Irishmen with names like Dooley, Sweeny, O’Connor, Doyle, Kavanaugh and Sullivan.  Between 1874 and 1884, a brick factory there hired as many as 80 Chinese workers. They produced and shipped an average of four million bricks a year. In 1882, the Morgan Oyster Company planted 10,000 eastern oysters in the bay just beyond the creek’s mouth. 

Each of the landings near the little town had its own fleet of small ships. Passengers lined up at the both wharfs to board steamers bound for San Francisco.  Farmers dropped off their grain, hay or strawberries to be shipped to the big city markets. Oystermen loaded oyster shells aboard. Bricks went to build San Francisco hotels.

Lumbermen tried floating their logs down the San Francisquito but gave up because the route was so crooked that the logs would get stuck on the banks as they rounded the curves.  They decided to use the Redwood City port instead.  The oyster business ended when boats started using steam power because their discharged oil damaged the beds. Without the oysters, lumber or bricks, and without the expected railroad, the area became a ghost town with only the wharfs left. Even they slowly deteriorated over the next fifty years until they disappeared.

At the same time, a new town was launched upstream on the flatlands along San Francisquito Creek.  Its name was Menlo Park. In 1854 two Irishmen, Dennis Oliver and D. C. McGlynn bought 1700 acres adjacent to the creek and built two houses for their families.  They erected a three-arched wooden gate with the words “Menlo Park” atop the middle arch, in memory of their home of Menlough in Ireland.

As Gold Rush fortunes were made, the area became popular for splendid summer homes for wealthy San Franciscans.  After 1863, the easier accessibility allowed by the newly arrived railroad further increased the popularity of the beautiful, oak studded land.  A number of elegant homes on large properties sprang up along the dirt roads. The owners gave their names to some of today’s streets and neighborhoods: Selby, Felton, Sharon.

Noted photographer Ansel Adams’ grandfather was here.  James Flood’s famous estate with its “wedding cake” house, the most splendid villa of all with its 60-some rooms, occupied all of today’s Lindenwood neighborhood.

Directly on the banks of San Francisquito Creek was a 280-acre estate with a 40-room mansion built in 1864 by William E. Barron.  Later former California governor and U. S. Senator Milton Latham owned it, followed by Timothy Hopkins, adopted son of Mark Hopkins. The Gate House, which stands today on Ravenswood Avenue by the Menlo Park Civic Center, is all that remains of this show place.

A village developed for the workers on the estates and for those who gave up life in the redwoods.  Hotels and boarding houses appeared near the train station.  By 1885 some ten saloons gave the town such a rowdy reputation that the Stanfords couldn’t accept it as a place to provide services for the university they were planning across the creek.

The little village of Mayfield further south along today’s California Avenue in Palo Alto wasn’t deemed a suitable atmosphere for college students either. Since the towns weren’t willing to give up their saloons, the Stanfords decided to create their own town along the south banks of the creek. 

Next: Stanford and Palo Alto