Santa Clara Valley 1964
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ต.ค. 2014
- The Santa Clara Valley in California has been called "The Valley of Heart's Delight". With the advancement in the technologies brought about by the microchip, it has become "Silicon Valley" at great cost as many of the orchards were torn down to make way for new homes. Cameraman Caroll 'Bing' Whitaker chronicled that transformation in 1964. This 16mm film was provided courtesy of History San Jose and digitally transferred by the California Pioneers of Santa Clara County. The complete Whitaker film from which this shorter film has been edited, can be viewed at HSJ: • Video
I remember the Santa Clara Valley in 1954. I feel like crying when I think of what it used to be and what it has become. I'm living in Nevada on 10 acres. I am slowly planting fruit trees here to have my own personal orchard; cherries, apricots, peaches, and plums.
In 1954 in Cupertino we called them PRUNES not plums (they still are). We picked them off the ground, a lot of hard work for us kids. Valley Fair, Santana Row & Kaiser on Homestead were Pear Orchards. What has happened to our beloved Santa Clara Valley is an atrocity. The high tech people call it progress!
@@margarethoward687: That's right. They were prune trees in a prune orchard, and we as kids earned extra money in the Summer as prune pickers. I'm growing Santa Rosa Plums, which are totally different from the prunes we used to pick. Do you remember the apricot orchard across from the Winchester House?
I remember as a kid growing up on the eastside of San Jose we had apricot,bing cherries and almond orchards everywhere,! Prune plums were my favorite plum,haven’t seen them in years I moved to Arkansas in 1979
I miss those great years in the 50's growing up in the valley.
I am crying.... Loved riding thru the Cherry Orchards... taking a picnic with my horse who grazed while I relaxed under a tree with friends... those were the days
Where did you board your horse?
I was Raised on a small farm which is now part of South San Jose, went to the old Almaden School, corner of Almaden and blossom Hill road. We worked the row crops and orchards every summer. School didn't start until Prune season was over. Some of my first paintings were of the fields and orchards. Their beauty still fills my heart. I joined the Navy in 1963 to get away from farm work and see the world. I now live in San Juan Bautista ca., which reminds me of what the Santa Clara Valley used to look like and the pace of life is so much slower and enjoyable.
Sad but true! I'm almost 70 and lived a lifetime across from an orchard that is no longer there...and have seen many highways and malls rise. Eventually, Silicon Valley made me sick. Really! Migraines all the time!I no longer live in California.Home is Fort Collins Colorado now, and I feel like I took 50 years off life. Oh, I'm sure that someday this sweet place will grow...but I'll be long gone.In the meantime, there are fields and wildflowers...people say hello and there isn't a freeway or expressway close to town (there is one interstate a ways off). No planes overhead either.
Bonnie Johnstone I was looking at a realtors online page and the most expensive property in Santa Clara had four acres! Four acres is the largest open space left? Once Sunnyvale and MountainView filled up, I guess that was the end. In Connecticut, I know someone selling their home that used to be next to an orchard because WalMart bought the land and is paving it over, Personally I’ve always valued land over house.
Great comment, Bonnie, thank you..:)
@@kmtforchina8916 Was there anything on the lot when you bought it?
@@kmtforchina8916 Just a half million! I lived in a nice home on Newhall Street in the 60's that my father payed 18 thousand dollars for, we were a middle class family and had what we needed, it was a different world then, a better world...I have to ask, when will people think the price they pay for something like a house is too much, how rich do people have to think the 1% need to be before they say "that's enough"?
Can only imagine what San Jose was like at that pristine time. Tech is progress, Tech destroys.
I remember playing in the orchards in the early 60s. I loved playing in the mustard. I grew up near Homestead and Kiely when everything was two lane and SC Central park looked like the orchard in this film.
I live next to homestead and Kiley, I would have loved to see what it was like back then
I grew up in the 60s in a little house in Mariposa Gardens, right there at Kiely and Homestead
I was playing in the orchards in the 40's and 50's, it is truly sickening what happened to our beautiful valley (Santa Clara) not Siicon Valley it's almost like saying the N word.
Yup. When growing up in the 60's those orchards are where we would play hide n seek. Then run down to the creek and catch pollywogs!😊❤🎉
My parents moved me and my siblings to Bryan Ave, right down the street from cherry Ave.,in 1981 My dentist was on cherry Ave., Ik my sisters and my brother remember. I grew up there. My parents moved out in '07 , it is no longer a family home, but I remember some of The best days of my life there! Thank you Mom and Dad!
viejo Great story. Thank you for sharing. I hope it continues to give you great memories in the future
As someone raised in San Jose this is amazing
I grew up in Blossom Hill Manor in Los Gatos in the 50s and the 60s. I used to play in the orchards along Los Gatos Almaden Road. It's very sad that the orchards are all gone.
So sad. I grew up across the street from a Plum orchard in 1966. My parents paid 19K for a 1,000 sq ft ranch house in West SJ. Simple beautiful times. When the new homes came in, very bad crime filled families moved in. Now the home sells for over 1.4 million. I collect old fruit crate labels to preserve the fond memories. It was a beautiful valley.
My parents bought their first home in Campbell - 4 bedroom for $16,000. Three aunts and one uncle also bought houses on the same block. Across the street was a beautiful orchard that my siblings, cousins and I use to play in. Sad that those days are gone.
That pan of the orchards and mustard plants in bloom - I can still smell them and hear the low hum of a gazillion honeybees pollinating them! My mother was born and raised at the west end of the valley in 1925 (Palo Alto), and I once remarked to her how nice it must have been then. She retorted "It was horrible! We had to get up at 5:30 in the morning during the summer and pick string beans so we could buy school clothes for the following year!" The grass is always greener, as they say... - Tony Arioli
I loved seeing those orchard growing up. So glad I"m gone. Went back last year for a memorial and found Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mt. View unrecognizable. I hope the people who live there now like it - I guess it's not bad if you didn't know it before.
My folks bought their first NEW home in 1961 when I was a junior in High School. It was a community in Santa Clara called "STONEGATE" near Pruneridge. We lived on Stevenson Street. The blue 2 story in the video (4:41)looks like ours except ours was green. A two story home about 2450 sq. ft. A 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bath.Living room, formal dining room. Huge family room and an all electric kitchen. I think it cost them around $23,450 back then. In 2019 it was listed at $1.7 million ! TODAY 11/16/22 it's valued at $2,313,000.00 ! I used to drive through PRUNE ORCHARDS and another development called "PRUNRIDGE ESTATES". IT WAS ALL SO BEAUTIFUL. So happy I was fortunate to grow up in that area back in the 60's . Post script: Today 7/31/23 it's valued at $2,418,900.00.
It's really sad what has become of this once beautiful and fertile valley. I grew up in the coyote area off Bailey Ave. I'm an 80s kid and remember all the fruit orchards and vegetable orchards. I remember seeing everything slowly being stripped away. By the mid-1990s, it was gone. I miss the scent of summer nights when the sprinklers misted the fields and the moon and stars lit the night.
You have a heart for nature & the beauty God created, but man & money destroyed.
I grew up on Cherry Avenue. It’s wild watching my house be built. Thank you for this footage, I feel weirdly comforted by it
Lindsay Cutler Thank you for your comment, Lindsay. Ironically, you lived on Cherry Avenue. As you watched this on TH-cam, were you aware that Cherry Avenue is the street in San Bruno California for TH-cam Corporation, the medium on which you found this video. That’s kinda weird as well!
Now I know why my family moved there. Grateful I grew up there in Campbell exploring the creeks catching pollywogs eating apricots and cherries in the orchards. Getting shot at with salt rock... Good times.
Learn from this, and prevent the next sprawl; build up, and close; save open space as you go along, and plan the expansion.
I remember all those subdivision billboards - my parents used to occasionally go house-hunting then.
Unfortunately, urban developments typically are far more spontaneous than they are planned.
My mom mentioned cutting up apricots after school at an orchard near Los Altos in the first half of the 1950's.
For me now, this is the saddest video I've ever seen.
If you go back up the info page above, click and play the entire movie that this is from, THAT will be the saddest. I'm with you on this. Any photo or film that shows even a bit of hill or mountain top, you know exactly where in the valley the camera is located.
In 1964, my husband's parents moved from NC to San Jose, CA. They purchased a new home for $17k for their family of 6 in one of the new developments of the time. My husband said he remembers riding his bike on a dirt road in front of his house and a peach farm across the street. He and his siblings could run around everywhere freely with little to no parental supervision. Two years ago, after his last parent passed, the home was sold for approx $1 million. It's now located on one of the busiest 4 lane streets in San Jose, both business and residential. Amazing how much change there has been in only 60 years.
Hmmm, 1964, let me guess the street. Was it Meridian Ave.? BTW, should've waited two more years, as your $1mil is now $1.25mil
"Keep in mind that home is where the heart is."
I grew up in Southeast San Jose (S. White Rd & Aborn Rd) in the late 1960's through the 1990...Apricots, Walnuts, Wine Grapes, Cherry Trees!! It was a beautiful place to grow up until 1980 and Silicon Valley was born.
That is very close to where I grow up on Quimby Road, right at the base of the foothills. My family came there in 1968 when I was 4 years old. They owned a twenty acre aprocot ranch. Our neighbors had prunes and grape vinyards. i watched as the city grew closer and closer to my home and the natural environment was built over with high end homes. My parents sold their property in 1994.
Grew up in the "notorious" Eastside of SJ in the early 60s (could see planes take off from Reid Hillview from our front yard). Good memories.
At the 3:50 mark....are you kidding me? My Grandma and Grandpa Bonasera's house was at the intersection of Bryan and Cherry. I grew up just two blocks from there. Unbelievable....and heartbreaking. :-(
Yep , that's exactly how it was, a paradise for children
I live here. It's so sad very little of this is left. I feel like fruit trees should grace the edges of the sidewalks in front of every house, give back some of what was stolen.
Wow! I lived on Jerald ave. which paralleled
el
camino
real. There was an apricot shed and yard just across from Vesuvios. I remember one summer of cutting apricots in halves, removing the pit and filling a tray I believe was 4'x8" size-wise. These were put into a sulphur house face up. Made a whopping 50 cents a tray.
oh my... i remember SEEING this happen... i was about between 11-14 yrs old-- and it was making way, for houses where we were living... even then, it made me sad, and i did not understand why... yet-- homes were built... even, as kids, some of us, knew that was a great sadness to the past...
Yep, so sad. Used to just go down the street and camp out over night and eat fruit in the massive orchards.
I moved from the San Fernando Valley where I was raised to Santa Clarita in the 70s and it seem like everyone followed me. Now living in Castaic on the old Ridge Route Road on acreage with peace and quiet.✌🏻
Thank you for sharing as it is so sad for me to see this video but brought back great memories. We had a vegtable and cherry farm in Santa Clara Valley and the 280/680 freeway came and cut our farm land into 2 sections which evenually my family relatives had to sell as it was too difficult moving tractors back and forth and harvesting the crops. I have very fond memories working on the farm and going to the cannery.
Born and raised in San Jose. Grew up in the Blossom Valley area off of Blossom Hill Road in the 1970s and 80s. Still had some farms in the area even then and no freeways like hwy 87 and 85. Now the farms are gone and so am I....down in Florida.
Sorry to hear you have to live in Florida off all places. All things considered, San Jose is still a very beautiful, progressive place to live.
@@KailuaKid Florida's not so bad...in fact it's my second favorite state. I have relatives who live a couple hours north of Fort Lauderdale. I would move there if the right employment opportunity presented itself, but there's not much chance of that...
beautiful and painful. even now.
These lands are as angry or as mad as the workers building on top if it's no wonder why people are so quick tempered
I was there then: the beauty, and futility of the land, was a peice of God's grace.
It's still there. You just have to look a little harder for it. It's still a great place to live.
Makes me sad to see this.such beauty destroyed by greed.
If anyone walked between Scott and the old Winchester, past the Monastery, via the concrete crack wall by Wilson hit me up. You journeyed right past me.
Stop calling it "The Valley of Heart's Delight". That was a phrase used by a company that made postcards with photographs of the valley. The true nickname was the "Blossom Valley" which reffed to the fruit trees (plums, apricots & cherries) that filled the valley with blossoms every spring.
This is incredible. Where can I find the full length film? The link you posted doesn’t seem to be working.
and it's happening here in Idaho too! even back then... Boise was changing! Progress, how I hate it at times...
Buy in. Wish we could have in the Bay Area, back in the day.
Touching footage, although a bit dramatic. Anyway, if not for "and then...", I wouldn't be residing in these parts, and moreover the Cambrian San Jose home I live in predates this video. :-)
If the makers of this film only knew....
Indeed. We now have Silicon Valley, the devil's playground.
oh my god, seeing the tree get bulldozed. how sad. :(
I hate that part!!! 😠🥺
No farms no food
I grew up in this.
Is this film available also in HD?
BlueSoulJim
Not yet that I know about. History San Jose has posted the entire, unedited film by Bing Whitaker.
3114 coldwater dr
Full working dairy
Watched them milk the cows
Early 60’s
Great memories
Such a tragedy
in the early 40s ranches could be bought cheap it gave oppurtunity to many folks who otherwise didnt have that much money just a little twist of fate
was this @1:02 from blossom hill rd I think is see the radar
This is what I remember growing up in the beautiful Santa Clara County. We had some of the most fertile soil in the world. The death of our valley started with endless suburban housing subdivisions. They cut up the orchards & sold them off one by one. It ended with the dot coms & barren concrete dead zone which is known as silicon valley. Damn those greedy SOBs.
😭
Very sad 😞 that developers have ruined California. I grew up in Orange County. I just left after 60 yrs. I’m 64 now. I’m up in Sonoma county and can see it’s going to be the same way
And then came Silicon Valley.
The color yellow is caution for a reason
I wish the cities in Santa Clara county were developed in a more efficient/respectful way. I also respect Santa Clara Counties history, but the way you depict the change from peaceful agricultural farmland to a concrete jungle of destruction is overly dramatic. Who sold off their lands to the highest bidder? Farmers and landowners of the time. Developers saw an opportunity and they exploited what was once a quiet orchard community. But what came to Santa Clara county was a larger community of people that was driven by the same American dream that we all have. To encourage, contribute, and strive for a society that works together. There was a housing boom in the 1960s and 70’s. San Jose in the mid-50’s had an initiative that encouraged people from all walks of life to come and be part of a growing society in the South Bay...... I love San Jose and the Bay Area and at times, I wish to know what it was like before the population spiked, but I also am proud of who we are now.
Well said, Jane. I suggest you would enjoy becoming a member of the California Pioneers of Santa Clara County.
At that time the property taxes were rising so fast that many farmers couldn't keep up and were forced to sell to developers.
The comments pretty much speak for themselves in terms of the past to present.
Sadly actions have unintended consequences. "Silicon Valley" actually started out as a Silicon *peninsula*. But when filling in Bay swamps and shallows and terracing Mt. San Bruno and other hillsides were declared environmentally verboten, it made the impetus to pave over the farmlands that much greater. Now hundreds of thousands of people are commuting in from as far away as Stockton and Modesto - and is THAT environmentally sound? Hell no!
now it's strip malls... oh well
Yep , that's exactly how it was, a paradise for children