Driscol

Greetings family, friends and neighbors! I hope that you enjoy today's brief local history ramblings "Strawberry Fields"...Bill

STRAWBERRY FIELDS

Mouth watering locally grown strawberries were a summertime treat served with home baked short cake and real whipped cream, or generously served over an ice cold dish of hand cranked vanilla ice cream. The rich farmland, abundant orchards and vineyards were in the process of being plowed under and turned into housing when we moved to the Mission Valley district of Fremont. There was still an original seasonal clapboard fruit stand at the corner of Mission Blvd. and Stevenson owned and farmed by a Japanese family that sold freshly locally picked sweet corn, tomatoes and cauliflower. They also farmed a small plot of strawberries that was all that remained of what , in 1916, was the largest strawberry farm in California. When the Driscoll brothers, transplants from County Cork, Ireland, out grew their property in Watsonville and a smaller plot of strawberry’s at the California Nursery in Niles, they purchased one hundred and five acres of rich farmland from the Martin Carter Estate and were soon farming more that five hundred acres of strawberries straddling Alameda County Road No.1008 between Mission Road and Irvington. Donald Driscoll ran operations in Watsonville and brother Richard moved from Niles to a cottage in Mission San Jose to over see their vast Mission Valley strawberry fields. Additional properties were added through the years and while the Driscoll’s became known for their strawberries, todays worldwide operations, still headquartered in Watsonville, produce all types of berries including blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries. Few of today’s focused Tesla drivers, intent bicyclists, dozing google bus passengers, anxious lyft clients, busy Amazon deliverers or eager middle school students using the busy mile long four lane thoroughfare have little idea that former Alameda County Road No.1008 was renamed Driscoll Road for the Irish brothers who planted strawberry fields right here in Mission Valley and created a business empire that now includes more than 900 growers and controls a third of the worlds berry market.    -Bill 

The attached photo from “Images of America - Irvington Fremont” was take in the 1930’s from the approximate location of where our house now sits. Driscoll Road can be seen on the left side of the picture behind the pump house, running East toward the foothills through the strawberry fields.