Greetings family, friends, and neighbors! I hope that you enjoy today's little local history vignette about one of the most historic roadways in the region. The attached photo is of the remaining ruins of the Palmdale Winery in Mission Valley at the corner of Washington Blvd. and Osgood Road that was demolished following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake........Bill
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At first it was a simple trail between the village of Oroysom, tucked against the coastal foothills, and the nearby shallow bay sloughs where the Ohlone people gathered the plentiful shellfish. With the coming of the Franciscan Padres in 1797 and the founding of Mission San Jose, the well worn pathway became a dusty and sometimes muddy road connecting the the adobe mission to the primitive boat landings of the South Bay and access to the growing port of San Francisco. By the mid -1800’s the small town at the crossroads of the old Mission road and the gravel roads south to San Jose, and north to Centerville was aptly named “The Corners”. Educator Rev. James McCullough of newly established Washington College intentionally misaddressed his mail to “Washington Corners” named for the acclaimed American author Washington Irving and by 1887 the official name for the growing community below the bluffs became Irvington. The two mile long roadway on the rich alluvial plain, crossing a major earthquake fault and connecting the Mission San Jose and Irvington districts, has been the location of fertile farmland, vineyards and world class wineries, two colleges, and the somber resting place of hundreds of indigenous people. The evolving thoroughfare, paved in 1920, has connected important religious centers, entertainment destinations, residential and manufacturing sites. Beginning across from the Mission and traveling west on the old Mission Road at various times through the decades were blacksmiths and saloons serving prospectors headed to the goldfields, lovely Palmdale Gardens and the opulent Starr and Best homes, the beautiful grounds of the Sisters of the Holy Family, Serra Center for young women, the original site of Ohlone College, the Ohlone Cemetery, world class Los Amigos Vineyard and Palmdale Winery, groundbreaking Washington College, private estates, warehouses for locally grown and packed fruit, busy Western Pacific Railroad Depot and Irvington Hotel, Historic Leal Theater and Maple Hall Skating Rink, Chadbourne Garage and filling stations and the tiny Irvington Park at “The Corners” Monument. It wasn’t until 1956 and the incorporation of Fremont in 1956 that one of the most historic roadways in the region was officially renamed....Washington Boulevard . -Bill
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