First autos chug into early Gilroy
My great-aunt, Marion Chesbro Walden, who was born in 1907 in
the family home on Church Street, used to write me letters
describing what life was like growing up in Gilroy during the early
decades of the 20th Century. At the time the town had a population
of less than 3,000.
First autos chug into early Gilroy
My great-aunt, Marion Chesbro Walden, who was born in 1907 in the family home on Church Street, used to write me letters describing what life was like growing up in Gilroy during the early decades of the 20th Century. At the time the town had a population of less than 3,000.
Her father, Dr. Heverland R. Chesbro, had a medical office on the west side of Monterey Street between Fifth and Sixth Streets, where the new vacuum cleaner center building is currently being completed.
“One of my early memories,” she wrote me, “was going from our house to the corner of Fifth and Church Streets to meet my father. He rode home from his office on a bike. At the corner, I got on the bike and he would wheel me home.” The family always ate dinner at noon. “After dinner, Dad would take a nap of half an hour. Often it was to catch up on sleep he had missed on a ‘confinement’ case.”
Although he rode out to make country house calls in a buggy, in 1907 Dr. Chesbro had the distinction of taking delivery of the first Ford in Gilroy. In later years, he frequently retold the story of his initial trip in the new vehicle. It was a test drive to which he would subject every new car he bought, consisting of heading in “high” gear up to the top of Mt. Madonna.
In those pre-Hecker Pass Highway times, that meant traveling by a winding route up through the Redwood Retreat area. A newspaper article in the family scrapbook referring to the 1907 Ford quotes him as saying, “I have often wondered how I ever made the steep and narrow grade in those days in that car.”
The family Ford was not Gilroy’s first exposure to an auto. That distinction fell to a Locomobile that a visitor drove into town for a day or two in January 1901. While in Gilroy, the car owner generously offered townspeople their very first car ride. Excitement over the new mode of travel spread. Within a few months, it was reported that Gilroyan Henry Holloway had constructed a steam engine-powered auto for Marion Ellis, whose family owned a hardware store. Ellis later became an early car dealer.
Ownership of the very first automobile in Gilroy, an Oldsmobile two-seater with back-to-back seats, is credited to local aviator Bob Fowler, who purchased the vehicle in 1901. Fowler was an early auto racer, breaking a world’s record in 1904 in a race at the Del Monte racetracks (now the Monterey County Fairgrounds) in a Pope-Toledo Touring car. By 1909, when horse-drawn stage service was discontinued to Gilroy Hot Springs, Fowler chauffeured passengers to the resort in the town’s first auto passenger vehicle, a Stanley Steamer.
My great-aunt Marion said her father’s 1907 auto remained in the family for some years. “It was a two-seater, red Ford with brass headlights and fittings,” she wrote. “It had a top, but that was folded down most of the time. One day Dad sold it, and as the story goes mother asked dad if he showed the new buyer how to drive. Dad said, ‘Why there is nothing to it. I showed him how to start and stop, and he went off down the street.'”
One time, when she was age two, Marion accompanied her father in the Ford on a house call. “The car hit a hole, I fell out of the car – there were no doors – and I cut my chin. We all went home where Dad put two or three stitches just under my chin. I still have the scar to this day. ”
The next family car was a Krit, according to my great aunt. The four-door roadster had no top, because the older boys in the family removed it and stored it in the garage. During rainy weather, with no top on the car, a passenger was required go along, to hold an umbrella over the doctor’s head while he drove. “Night calls were frequent,” Marion wrote. “Rain or shine, he got up, put on his pants and shoes, threw on his coat over his tucked-in nightshirt, put on his hat and was off to see an ill patient. Sometimes my mother went with him, rather than worry about him until he returned. In those early days, she was the one who held the umbrella over his head when it rained.”
In 1915, the family purchased a five-passenger Oldsmobile. After getting it home from the agency, Dr. Chesbro realized he hadn’t been shown how turn the engine off. He drove around and around the block until the car ran out of gas, and finally coasted to a halt in front of the family home. The three oldest sons in the family seldom had a chance to use the car, since it always had to be kept ready in case of “calls.”
Dr. Chesbro was concerned over the area’s dusty, bumpy roads and served on several committees to promote better driving conditions, including more paved roads. In late 1907, in an undated article in the San Jose Mercury Herald, he called the automobile “a civilizing influence” and told the newspaper reporter, “Through the instrumentality of the machine, the whole state has become a unit. Since the auto has made those happy conditions possible, then it is incumbent on the state to place its roads in the best possible condition. Then, too, California wants the very best people, and the way to get them is to place within their reach the best possible environments; and the one attraction more than any other in these days of rapid travel, is a road that is a delight to travel.”
With the advent of the car, auto touring soon became a popular attraction. By 1912, plans were being drawn up for a new state highway system in California, one to serve the increasing number of cars exploring new routes. Long in planning, the Yosemite-to-the-Sea Highway was a special favorite of Dr. Chesbro. Designed to bring folks from the Central Valley, over Pacheco Pass and through Gilroy, en route to Santa Cruz, it opened the way for the eventual opening in 1928 of Hecker Pass Highway.
Given his love of the automobile, the potential of test driving a new car in “high” gear up to the top of Mt. Madonna along the modern, paved route must have been exciting, and far speedier, for Dr. Chesbro.
