Book 1 |
1/1955 - 6/1957 |
This book includes the year 1956, the year marked by the birth pangs leading to
incorporation of the town. Major topics are the fight for incorporation and the role of Neary Quarry opponents. |
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Book 2 |
1961 - 1969 |
The book spans eight years 1961 to 1969. Major topics topics include Sewer District Issues,
failed attempt to recall Mary Davey, Byrne Preserve acquisition, pivotal role played by Central Drive,
soil instability in the Hills, and acquisition of Little League Fields. |
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Book 3 |
9/1972 - 6/1973 |
This book covers a turbulent period when our zoning came under attack from La Raza Unida, the Citizens United for a Rural Environment (C.U.R.E) organization
became active, Council Member Mary Davey faced another recall election and City Manager Fritschle was fired.
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Book 4 |
5/1969 - 12/1970 |
The biggest issues in this book include Adobe Creek Lodge with Dave Bellucci and La Raza Unida, the Central Drive wars,
Mary Davey controversies, and consternation over potential development of Coyote Hill by Palo Alto with associated impact on Arastradero Road.
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Book 5 |
1/1957 - 12/1960 |
Covering the town's second year of existence, major topics include ongoing battle with Neary Quarry about heavy trucks, a movement to disincorporate the town, formation of Los Altos Hills Association,
argument about and selection of/between three major North/South traffic routes through local cities (eventualy to become Foothill Boulevard and Hiway 280), Duveneck property (Hidden Villa) is greenbelted,
LAH Fire District formed by separating from County Fire District, annexation disputes with both Palo Alto and Los Altos.
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Book 6 |
1971 - 1972 |
This book covers the 15th anniversary of the town. Ongoing subjects include lawsuits about sewer assessments and the Adobe Creek Lodge permit. Zoning
is under attack by a lawsuit from La Raza Unida, and the town is going to go forward with the Matadero Creek subdivision. After much debate, LAH is in favor of the formation
of the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District.
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Book 7 |
6/1973 - 8/1974 |
Councilmembers Davey and Kubby targets for recall, the saga of El Retiro and Adobe Creek Lodge annexation and use permits continues, Uncashed checks at Town Hall lead to major problem,
Elections - intereviews with all the candidates, CURE sponsored candidates triumph in election, Town Hall to be remodelled, Palo Alto School District sells 10 acres in LAH,
Formation of Mid-Pen Regional Space District ongoing topic.
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Book 8 |
12/1971 - 2/1988 |
This book is fairly short and appears to be a work-in-progress that was never "finished" because it contains a number of loose clippings that were never mounted on pages, also the clippings cover a wide span of
nearly two decades. Rather than a particular time-span, it looks as if the book was intended to feature well-known or notable local personalities, primarily the Duvenecks of Hidden Villa although articles on some
other notables are included.
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Collection - Town Newsletters |
1967 - 2003 |
A collection of Town Newsletters - collection still in process of being built, as more old newsletters are acquired, re-formatted digitally, and keyword indexed.
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Folder - Pathways |
1957 - 2002 |
A folder containing a number of loose newspaper clippings mainly focused on the pathways and trails of Los Altos Hills.
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Rex Gardiner Collection |
1955 |
A collection of original documents prepared and assembled by Rex Gardiner in 1955, in preparation for,
and support of, the idea of incorporating a town to be called Los Altos Hills.
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Photo Album - History of Los Altos Hills |
1900 - 1975 |
Images of pages copied from a photo album. Subsequent research has identified the original album from which these pages were copied, it
is part of the Florence Fava Collection, now archived at the Los Altos History Museum.
There are references within the text to "current residence of" and similar - from the context of other captions this would appear to refer to 1973 or thereabouts -
one caption mentions the Bicentennial celebrations of 1975 which is the latest date referred to in the album thus giving some idea about when it was compiled,
although clearly a lot of the photos are much older.
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Photo Album - Penfold Collection of Slides |
1970's |
Some images scanned from a collection of 35mm slides taken by Gordon Penfold who was the Town's Public Safety Officer for about seven years during the 1970's.
Images include Byrne Preserve covered in a layer of snow, a few aerial images of spots within the town, the Fire Stations serving Los Altos Hills and surrounding environs,
and further miscellaneous shots.
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Photo Album - Bicentennial Commemorative Postcards |
1976 |
On the occasion of the United States Bicentennial, a set of eight postcards showing historic scenes from Los Altos Hills was created.
This set was reproduced and made available for sale to the public. Also included in this album are images of a commemorative tie-tack and lapel button
created for the same occasion.
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Early History of Police Protection in Los Altos Hills |
1956 - 1972 |
This volume is in a different format - it consists of a total about 100 images of newspaper clippings (spread over three pages) about the way Police Protection was handled in the early years
after incorporation of the town. These clippings were collected from a number of different scrapbooks and assembled here as a subject-specific collection.
As such, the images presented
here are redundant in that they also exist (but scattered widely) in other parts of the digital library.
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15th Anniversary Booklet |
1971 |
"Formation of th Town of Los Altos Hills" - A booklet created by Florence Fava on the occasion of the Town's 15th Anniversary. A copy of the original typescript
pages were captured photographically and preserved in a long-forgotten PDF file. Unfortunately, the combination of the font used by the original typewriter,
and the loss of sharpness caused by the "duplicating" rendered the original PDF hard to read on a computer screen.
So the orignal text was re-typed directly
into a computer to create an approximate facsimile of the text, this was combined with the photographs and illustrations which were lifted from the original pdf
files to create a new more readable edition of the original typescript.
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Commemorative Plaques |
Various |
This is an inventory of the various commemorative plaques located in town or could once be seen in Los Altos Hills
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Historical Sites Booklet |
Unknown |
This is a xeroxed copy of a document which appears to be a draft of a booklet intended to describe the designated "Historical Sites" within Los Altos Hills
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Ginzton Archives |
1948 - 2000 |
A collection of newspaper clipping covering Ed and Artemas Ginzton (residents of Los Altos Hills) as well as two comemmorative booklets
summarizing the history of Varian Associates at different points in its growth.
Ed was a founding employee
of Varian Associates and rose to become its CEO. Artemas was a motive force in the establishment of pathways through the Town as well as at the County and State level..
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Fremont Hills Country Club - In the beginning |
1956-1957 |
Soon after the Town was founded, the Planning Commission realised that active encouragement by the private sector would be needed to
provide the new town with recreational amenities - so they made known to subdividers of property that land should be set aside for this purpose.
Accordingly the five partners in the organization that was developing the Fremont Hills property, formed a non-profit and became its five-member
Board of Directors. From this grew the Fremont Hills Country Club.
Some years later (date not determined) a 12-page book was published for the club's membership in which a few of the early documents
that surrounded the formation of the club were reproduced. That document was scanned and is shown here.
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Early Aerial Images from before the town existed. |
Approx 1947 |
Six aerial images are presented which show the Los Altos Hills landscape before the town's incorporation. Each image is annotated with a few colored dots to orient the viewer
to the geographic area shown in each image.
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Los Altos Hills Aerial Survey |
Approx 2001 |
The exact date is unknown, but believed to be around 2001, an aerial survey was performed covering the Town of Los Altos Hills. The original black-and-white images were
in a computer file format that could not be read by widely available consumer software at that time, so they were converted to "JPEG" format and made available on a CD together with a web-page
formatted as an index into the collection of images, thus making the imagery accessible to people who had a home computer equiped with an HTML "browser" on their computer.
There were two such browsers in common use at that time, one called "Netscape" and another called "Explorer". The contents of this CD are reproduced here.
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The Evolution of Los Altos Hills Town Hall |
1956 - 2020 |
A Picture Album of photographs (and a few newspaper clippings) spread across three web "pages" - the Original Town Hall (1956-2004),
The "New" Town Hall (Built 2005), and The Heritage Park (The Orchard area with the Heritage House and collection of Old Farm Equipment)
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Grab Bag |
Various |
A number of miscellaneous images and text files with historic value that are
worth archiving, but for which we do not have a physical "hard copy" counterpart.. They have been collected here in
this "Grab Bag" to assure there is a
copy in the archives - rather than loose track of them.
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Book n.....n+1 |
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Further books, folders, collections, etc. will appear here as digital versions get created.
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