Brennan myers

A Fading History

Brennan Myers 1

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank my partner, Andy Hamlin, my parents, and Freestyle Academy for allowing me to create this amazing project. So much time and effort has been put in by all of those people to help me achieve my overall goal, and for that I thank them. I would also like to thank the History Museum for preserving the beautiful history of Los Altos.

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Table of Contents: Preface.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Introduction.. . . . . . . . . . . 9 Chapter 1.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11-13 Chapter 2.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15-17 Chapter 3.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20-23 Conclusion.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 Works Cited.. . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 5

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Preface I chose the History House for this project because of the personal connection that my family has with this special place. My father’s family has lived in Los Altos since 1923 and has lived through the changes from the farming lands of Santa Clara County to the emergence of the tech capital of the world that is known as Silicon Valley. The Los Altos History Museum gives me a strong connection to my past and to the family members I was not

around to meet. It opens a doorway to a time period I would have otherwise never been able to witness.

Nowhere else in our community is there a place which serves to preserve the history of Los Altos, and the Los Altos History Museum does just this.

In addition to the personal connection, the Los Altos History Museum interested me because I love Los Altos, and history.

It always amazed me how technology and values change over the periods of

time, and there is no greater example of that than the change that occurred in Santa Clara County over the last sixty years.

With this huge change of focus within Santa Clara County’s citizens going from farming to strictly technology, the Los Altos History Museum documents and preserves the immense changes that have occurred over the last six decades.

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Introduction H

ave you ever found an antique box full of old items that belonged to a different time just hidden away somewhere? Have you ever found anything like that box that silently holds a piece of time that is to never come back again? As I asked myself these questions and thought about my personal history as well as my hometown’s history, my thoughts led me to believe that there is a place in our own Los Altos community that resembles that antique box perfectly.

This special place goes by the name of the Los Altos History Museum, which has preserved the history of Los Altos as the times have changed over the last sixty years.

The history museum’s campus has been around since the early 1900s, which dates back to the earliest days of Los Altos as a town. Also, the history museum has portions of land on its property that mimics

what oldtime Los Altos looked like an represented, such as authentic orchards and farmland. In the early 1900s, Los Altos was strictly a farm town that grew goods such as apricots, apples, and all other produce including vegetables;indeed, “Santa Clara County as well as Los Altos were known as the orchard capitals of California.”(Myers). The main cash crop that Los Altos produced was the apricot, and the mass production of such quality apricots is what gave Los Altos its claim to fame back in its earliest days.

Having a museum such as the Los Altos History is such a benefit to our community because it shows our generation what our hometown was like when it was just getting started as a city, and it gives us the perspective that life wasn’t always as it is in this technology run world we all know today. The museum attracts my attention because it has been

such a landmark for our city due to that it allows to me almost experience a time period that I was not fortunate enough to live in, which is very rare in the technological era we are currently living in. The museum is generous enough to give an opportunity to people who did not live in the early days of Los Altos to see what life was like, and iAt also allows them to understand how much times have changed over decades of years. Without this museum, the early history of Los Altos would most likely be lost or skewed due to so much time passing, but since there is this amazing museum available to the public, the history of Los Altos remains forever preserved.

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Chapter 1: Apricot Preserves One of the greatest aspects about the Los Altos History Museum is that it clearly tells the story of a continuously evolving community that most people who live the area do not even know about. It allows for the history of a lost era to be reborn again within people’s minds. The time period it preserves so well is the time period before Santa Clara County became known for its technological advancements. Before the technology boom within

Silicon Valley during the 1950s, all of Santa Clara County, including Los Altos, was known for one thing. They were known for their great ability to farm and produce fresh goods that came from luscious orchards.

Although Los Altos was known for it’s great ability to farm all kinds of fruits and vegetables, the area grew famous primarily because of it’s production of apricots and nuts. The farming success of the area

was the sole reason for attracting settlers to the city.

The exhibits surrounding the property outside of the Los Altos History Museum show farming tractors and authentic farming tools that were used daily by the farmers that once made Los Altos and Santa Clara County famous. When I viewed these authentic tools that belonged to a much different time period that what we live in today, it made me truly realize how much times have

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have changed over the last decades. Never had I seen a clearer picture of what life was like in our society before cell phones and computers took over. It was evident that this was the the sole reason of museum’s existence.

For Santa Clara County, the morph from farming community to the leading tech capital of the world began in 1953 with the invention of the silicon transistor, “Before the creation of the transistor, life within the Santa Clara County area was completely different… the transistor took away the focus of farming from the entire community.”(Curtain). In 1953, in Bell Labs, William Shockley developed this in-

vention which changed the dynamics of many cities in California at the time. The transistor is a device that amplifies and switches electronic signals throughout electronic devices and with the creation of this device, the people within the communities focus began to change. No longer were they interested in farming and growing goods, but were interest in advancing this new and boundless idea of technology.

The 1950s marked a time of immense change for all of Santa Clara County, a change that is still evolving to this day: “At the time, it was almost shocking how the creation of the new era technology shifted people’s focus so drastically.” (John-

son). Instead of being a farming community, Santa Clara County as well as Los Altos continued to grow and become more powerful in the field of technology. Silicon Valley is now home to some of the most prestigious technology companies in the world, which includes Apple, Intel, Facebook, Twitter, and many more world famous tech companies. This vast change was the spark of a new generation that has carried on for decades.

With the emergence of the Silicon Valley, the world slowly began to change.

The agricultural world had vanished into the dust of that past, never to return to the heights of its popularity as it once had in

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the 1950s. As with the times, the people of Silicon Valley’s lives were changed.

Due to this large change of lifestyle, it’s estimated that ¾ of the citizens living in Los Altos today do not even have the slightest idea of what their hometown once stood for and thrived upon: “Most people who currently live in Los Altos today most likely have no idea that there was anything significant going on in the area before the birth of the technology era.”

(Hamlin). The Los Altos History Museum offers the key to knowledge of a prior time period that is no longer with us, which is in an incredible feat within itself.

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Chapter 2: Apricot to Apple

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s the tech industry began to boom, the lifestyle of the people in the area began to completely change. With a complete shift in focus, farming became less and less relevant in society.

Language , cars, and housing all changed, which slowly led to the demise of all the orchards that once were the basis of Santa Clara Coun-

ty. People from all over the settlers from many different areas to come down to world eventually caught wind about the vast change Silicon Valley looking for a new life and occupation.

Even just ten years after the farming area, people from India, China, Japan, and Europe flocked to Silicon Valley for the pure excitement and potential of the technology industry boom. “The most diversely populated area in California became what is now Silicon Valley due to the technological advancements that were being made in that area.� (Crabtree). Because in Silicon Valley which of this heavily included the tech boom, which caused many

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mass movement of people toward Silicon Valley due to the technology boom, the area of the Santa Clara county is still one of the most diverse cultural areas in the world to this day. With this tech boom, styles changed dramatically.

People began to become more outgoing and started thinking much more outside the box just because this new idea of technology allowed them to do something completely new, something that the people in Santa Clara County never thought they would be able to do in a farming only community.

Because of these ideas that people were given ability to think of because of the technology, companies such as Apple and Intel were able to begin their technology creations, some of which

the creations have changed the world forever. In relation to this major change, the people in the area began completely modernizing the

once very simple farmland of Santa Clara county. Modern style automobiles, houses, business offices, and every other human run organization or activity began to be the norm as the years passed and as technology continued to progress. As time continued to pass on, the knowledge of the history of Los Altos continued to fade more and more.

With this fad-

ing knowledge of Los Altos history, the existence of the Los Altos History Museum became all the more important.

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“The most diversely populated area in California became what is now Silicon Valley due to the technological advancements that were being made in that area.�

- David Crabtree

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Chapter 3: Importance of Knowledge W

ith most people under the age of forty having no knowledge about what Los Altos was like before the technology boom, there are places that can inform them on the amazing history that our hometown of Los Altos has to offer.

Places like the Los Altos History Museum which is located in the middle of downtown Los Altos.

The Los Altos History House offers many great things such as full tours

and great preservation of areas that show exactly what Los Altos was like before the technology boom. On the museum’s land, which is a very large area, stands the one of the oldest houses in Los Altos which is called the Gilbert J. Smith house. This house was built in 1902 and was home to one of the greatest farmers to live in the Santa Clara County area.

With this house on the museum property, people can go on tours of the

house to learn and really get the feel of what it was like to live in Los Altos during the early 1900s up to the time where the technology boom had occurred, “There’s no place that shows the history of Los Altos more than the Gilbert J. Smith house and the property that it sits on.”(Ashbury). Places like these are so important because not many places can preserve history quite like museums and the Los Altos

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History House does this exceptionally well. Without the History House, the knowledge of the history of Los Altos would most likely be lost among most people, and that would be one of the saddest feats to ever occur to a town or county.

We need to the history house for so many reasons, and in my opinion, it is one of the most influential areas in our whole county. Even with large demographic changes, large lifestyle changes, and pretty much changes in every aspect of human life that has occurred in Santa Clara County over the last 60 years, the one bit of land that has not changed, and

come from. It’s the basis of life.”(Washburn). In order for the Los Altos History Museum to continue its great doing of preserving a very interesting and mostly unknown history of Los Altos, donations are needed for the museum to keep on with their activities and preservations of an old time Los Altos, “Every penny counts, we need all the help we can get to keep our museum afloat.”(Ashbury). We as a community need to donate to this wonderful organizatown’s history because it tion to keep our town’s hisgives people a sense of tory alive! The history of community and it gives them a great idea of a where Los Altos depends on it. they came from,“Everyone needs to have knowledge about the place that they probably will never change, is the Los Altos History Museum and the Los Altos History House. It is so important for people to be educated on their home-

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“Everyone needs to have knowledge about the place that they come from... It’s the basis of life.”

- Jane Washburn

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Conclusion History is made everyday and as each day passes, and as time goes on much of it is either forgotten or thrown away.

The job of the Los Altos History Museum is to make sure that the history of Los Altos is never forgotten

or thrown away, making it an immense landmark in Santa Clara County. With the amazing preservations of Los Altos history, this magical place gives the greatest gift of all back to the community, which is the gift of knowl-

edge of a prior time that involves your personal history. This place has a very special place in my heart and I hope this landmark of Los Altos stays alive forever presenting people with their gift that keeps on giving.

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“Every penny counts, we need all the help we can get to keep our museum afloat.”

- Marilyn Ashbury

Works Cited Ashbury, Marilyn. “History of Los Altos 3.” Personal interview. 18 Mar. 2015.

Berman, Morris. The Twilight of American Culture. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

Netlibrary.

Web. 22 Aug. 2009.

Cox, Ted. “Silicon Valley: The History.” Daily Herald [Arlington Heights, IL] 1 Aug. 2006: 1.

Infotrac Custom Newspapers. Web. 27 Aug. 2009.

Crabtree, David. “The Importance of History.” Gutenberg College. McKenzie Study Center, 10 Nov. 2014. Web. 27 Mar. 2015.

Curtin, Michael F. “The Uprising of Silicon Valley:.” Vital Speeches of the Day 72.20-21 (Aug. 2006): 578-80. Print.

Edmundson, Mark. “Why Museums Are Essential” Harper’s Sept. 1997: 39-49. Print.

Hamlin, Rod. “History of Los Altos 2.” Personal interview. 11 Mar. 2015.

Myers, Alex P. “History of Los Altos.” Personal interview. 4 Mar. 2015.

Stanley, Johnson. “History of Los Altos.” History of Los Altos. Los Altos Mercury, 5 Apr. 2013. Web. 27 Mar. 2015.

Washburn, Katharine, and John F. Thornton, eds. The Youth’s History, New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.

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Author Biography Brennan Myers is a Junior at Los Altos High School and Freestyle Academy who currently lives in Los Altos. He loves history and plays baseball competitively in his free time. Brennan also loves socializing and having a good time. When he goes to college, he would like to attend Stanford University, where he would study Communications. Brennan is very possibly the next president of the United States of America.

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