New Year promised improvements
By the start of 1906, big things were in the works for Gilroy.
With a population of 2,500 inhabitants, the town was bustling with
growth and progress.
To the south, just past today’s railroad overpass, oil wells
were being drilled at Sargents. The crude oil was used to pave new
roadbeds for the area’s growing automobile traffic. Soon, an
investment group, the Gilroy Oil Company, was set up to finance
drilling an area seven miles west of town on the William Trombley
Ranch. After securing a 20-year lease to explore the area,
promoters claimed the property held
”
fine indications of oil.
”
Investor’s money would be refunded, they promised, if proceeds
from stock sales were not enough to finance sinking a well.
New Year promised improvements
By the start of 1906, big things were in the works for Gilroy. With a population of 2,500 inhabitants, the town was bustling with growth and progress.
To the south, just past today’s railroad overpass, oil wells were being drilled at Sargents. The crude oil was used to pave new roadbeds for the area’s growing automobile traffic. Soon, an investment group, the Gilroy Oil Company, was set up to finance drilling an area seven miles west of town on the William Trombley Ranch. After securing a 20-year lease to explore the area, promoters claimed the property held “fine indications of oil.” Investor’s money would be refunded, they promised, if proceeds from stock sales were not enough to finance sinking a well.
Agriculturally, the prune dominated the economy. Thousands of drying plats were spread out in the sunshine each fall, the dried fruit sales enriching local coffers beyond expectations. Apple and walnut orchards dominated the slopes west of town, with vineyard tracts lining Bodfish Road, today’s Hecker Pass Highway. In 1906, to serve the growing viticulture industry, the big new Las Animas Winery was opened north of Gilroy, stocked with “the most modern equipment.”
Gilroy’s citizens were urged to look to, and follow, San Jose’s civic example. Only 26 miles to the north, the county seat’s bustling 30,000 population had turned the city into a modern metropolis. By 1906, Gilroy could, and should, do no less, town officials claimed. To show their support for serious educational pursuits, the Library trustees applied to Andrew Carnegie for gift of $10,000 to construct a library building.
In 1905, the first electric lines and poles to bring light and power to Gilroy had been strung in from Fresno. Soon, a Promotion Club was formed to ensure voters would accept the concept of a modern citywide lighting system and be ready to support it when it finally arrived. And since public interest in general growth was aroused, club officers said, attention should also focus on a “crying necessity for a sewerage system, better water storage, and a new City Hall.” To prepare billing for the lighting plant’s customers, the City Council in 1906 fixed an ordinance for electric rates at 10 cents per kilowatt hour for use under 100 hours and then 7 cents per kilowatt hour for the next 300-400 hours.
Civic pride was at its bursting point over the spanking new, attractive City Hall on Monterey Street. A successful bond drive had addressed most of Gilroy’s outstanding issues, thanks to the hard work of the Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Promotion Club. By August 1905, citizens had held a victory celebration on the new city hall lot at Sixth and Monterey streets. Three months later, on the afternoon of November 20, throngs gathered to witness the laying of the City Hall corner stone, set in place “with all due formality and ceremony.”
A special tribute to Gilroy’s progress appeared on the front page of the Salinas Index, calling the town, with its rich resources and abundant, healthful climate “one of the garden spots of the world.”
One drawback, which in 1906 was still holding back population growth, was the area’s large land holdings, owned by individuals who refused to divide up the large parcels and sell them at reasonable rates. “Prosperous homes, orchards and vineyards would increase and multiply, and cheerful farm houses and handsome villages would spring up, nestling amid foliage, fruit and bloom,” the Salinas Index Editor suggested.
To furnish the bustling home building business, the Whitehurst and Hodges lumber mill atop Mt. Madonna furnished an average 15,000 feet of redwood per day, with an estimated annual output of 1.5 million feet from its 2,500 acres of forested tract. Thirty men were employed at the mill, where three teams of eight horses made regular hauls into town, to be sold at the company’s lumberyard located at Sixth and Church streets. The Gilroy Advocate Editor described a trip up to watch the sawmill operations. “It is an interesting sight to watch the six yoke of oxen, some of which weigh a ton each, coming down the skid road with a long string of logs, chained together. Then to see the logs rolled into place and how quickly the two big buzz-saws convert it to 14-by-16 foot rough boards. Another saw splits them into various sizes and so they pass on. The ends are trimmed and they are ready to be loaded onto wagons for town.”
Beginning in 1906, the arrival of electric power changed the focus of agriculture in South Valley. For the first time large scale irrigation of vast tracts of farm land was achieved. At the same time, increased irrigation caused a decline in Gilroy’s decades-long corner on the cheese market. An editorial noted, “Not one fifth the cheese is made here as in the past. Pasture land is now much used for seed and beet culture and cow herds are reduced.”
On the crime scene, in 1906 slot machines were a problem in Gilroy’s Chinatown, located along Monterey Street south of Seventh. Sheriff’s raids on gambling parlor had little effect. In late August 1906, Gilroy’s Mayor and City Council were summoned to appear before the Grand Jury in San Jose to explain why the slot machines had not yet been banned, as they were in other communities. But with a large tax profit gained from the operations, the City Fathers were reluctant to act.
Although its crime rate continued to embarrass the citizens, Gilroyans by the end of 1906 could look with pride at their fine educational system. The high school, with an enrollment of 82, boasted its highest attendance ever.
In September 1906, a new post office was opened. A grocery store, the New California Market, located at Old Gilroy and Monterey streets, boasted a refrigerated system to keep its delicatessen selection of fresh seafood, fowl and game at peak taste for the customers. The shelves were stocked with delicious items from the new cannery constructed in 1906 on Railroad Street by the Bisceglia Brothers of Morgan Hill. The cannery, later operated by the Filice and Perelli families, would bring work and funds into town for decades to come.
As the New Year of 1906 rolled around, Gilroyans could look with pride at their growing city. Whatever its past indolence, according to the Advocate Editor, the town was finally beginning to “awaken from the lethargy of a quarter century.”
