Lester D. Earnest
Email Les@cs.stanford.edu Phone 650-941-3984
Los Altos Hills Council
Subject: Historical inconsistencies persist in the
Town of Los Altos Hills
Beginning at
Nonfunctioning
Government
Given that Title 11 of the Municipal Code [4] includes elaborate procedures for proposing, reviewing and designating historical Landmarks, one might wonder how many such places have been recognized over the years? The answer is none.
Could it be that no such sites have been nominated? On the
contrary, on
Wallace Stegner Residence,
This will recognize of Stegner's substantial work on the committee that
initiated the founding of the Town and his contributions as an internationally
acclaimed author.
Packard Residence,
This will recognize David Packard's co-founding of Hewlett Packard Corporation,
However the Mayor never scheduled any public hearings on either of these proposals and neither she nor any other Council member offered the History Committee an explanation for why their requests were being ignored. It should be acknowledged, however, that this was the way that nearly all recommendations by the History Committee have been treated by the Council. Thus there has been no consideration given to Landmark status even in the current important case.
On May 3, 2012 the Town’s Planning Commission unanimously approved the proposals [3, 4] to authorize demolition of the former Wallace Stegner residence, which was where the original plan to incorporate the Town of Los Altos Hills was written by Stegner, namely the Green Sheets [5], and to “preserve” the small Study where the world famous author wrote many of his best books, including the Pulitzer Prize winning “Angle of Repose,” by moving it from its hilltop location downhill into a dark forest where it will be both inaccessible and invisible.
In doing this the Commission ignored major defects in the environmental study, including numerous historical errors that had been called to their attention [6]. Many of those errors were evidently the result of the Town’s failure to repair inaccuracies in the Town History web page [7], even though they had been repeatedly called to the attention of the Town Staff by members of the History Committee, but are still there today. Most of those errors did not have a big impact on the study results except for one major blunder. In the Circa historical study included in [1] in the section on “Criterion A” it says
“Historical research did not reveal
that the property at
The author was apparently jumped to that conclusion because she was unaware of Wallace Stegner’s role in initiating the incorporation of the Town. She makes that clear by making no mention of his authorship of the Green Sheets [5]. I assume this was the result of inadequate research rather than suppression of an important historical fact.
Under Criterion A, Stegner’s residence was clearly associated with an important event in local history, namely the incorporation of the Town, which was started there. That incorporation proposal, aimed at preserving a low density rural environment was just barely adopted by popular vote in 1956. Had Stegner and his colleagues not succeeded, the lands now included in the Town would almost certainly have been incrementally annexed into the growing nearby cities of Los Altos and Palo Alto and, under their zoning laws, would now be much more densely populated and include commercial buildings. This fact was called to the attention of the Planning Commission in [6] but, as with other things they didn’t want to know about, it was ignored in their findings.
The Planning Commission also ignored the longstanding
request by the Los Altos Hills Historical Society, a 501(c)(3) charitable
nonprofit corporation, to allow Stegner’s former Study to be moved to one of
two sites on Town Lands and turned into a mini-museum, all at the expense of
the Society. That request had been made on
The Planning Commission also ignored a later resolution by
the Town’s History Committee, who on
“The History Committee recommends that if and when a demolition permit is granted for the Lands of Yong on South Fork Lane and if the owners agree, the Los Altos Hills Historical Society will be permitted to move the former Study of Wallace Stegner, at their own expense, to a site in the apricot orchard next to the Town’s Heritage House, with the exact location to be determined by Town officials and, on arrival this structure will become Town property. The small bathroom that had been added to this structure at one end and the book storage area on one side are to be abandoned at the original site and this building is to be reconstructed at the destination at the expense of the Historical Society so as to allow it to be used as a museum. We recommend that the Town not charge for any town permits needed to carry out this work.”
Why was this request ignored?
Evidently the Planning Commission, like the Council, was intent on not making
any real Landmarks publicly accessible.
The Council now gets to confirm
this. While none of the Council Members have publicly stated their positions on
this matter yet, two of them tipped their hands long ago by fabricating false
claims about Stegner and his Study in press interviews, as discussed in my
“Myths” article [9]. It will take only three Council Members to approve the
proposed double historical atrocity.
How the Town honors history
It should be mentioned that the
Town has not completely ignored historical matters. In fact they have invested
thousands of dollars in fake history. A series of volunteer “Town Historians”
were appointed by the Council over the years and one named Florence Fava took
over in the 1970s. She had joined an anthropology class at
Fava concurrently started writing
a book on the history of Los Altos Hills and enrolled in a
One of Fava’s fabrications was her
claim that the Anza Expedition traveled through Los Altos Hills in 1776 along
what is now Fremont Road. She apparently made up that story so as to justify
participating in the Bicentennial Celebrations that were held across the
country that year. She also talked the Council into funding two large stone
monuments with bronze plaques that were placed along
Another expensive “history”
project was the 1984 moving of a small former farmhouse from
The Council later turned most of
the space over to the town’s Emergency Communications Committee to house their
radio equipment and the historical artifacts were put in boxes and moved into
the Council’s closet, where they now get rearranged on a weekly basis so that
it is virtually impossible to figure out where a given artifact is located even
if you know it is somewhere in the collection. Thus this expensive Heritage
House historical preservation project led to no exhibit space at all. Since the
town’s History Committee was formed in 2008 it has repeatedly adopted
resolutions asking the Council to make space available to display historical
artifacts but, like nearly all of their other requests, these have been
consistently ignored.
Having noted that many street
names in Los Altos Hills are misspelled versions of Spanish words and given
that in 1961 I had invented the first computer spelling checker, it occurred to
me that those names should be corrected, so in July 2008, shortly after joining
the newly formed History Committee, I got them to endorse that proposal and
took it to the Council, where I encountered hostility. One of the public
remarks was “Why should we spell things the way that Mexicans do?” Thus that
proposal went down the drain.
While bicycling to Town Hall one
day I paused to read one of the historical monuments on
Overall, then, in spite of the
Town’s disinterest in real historical preservation they have spent quite a lot
on fake history.
The changing character of Los Altos Hills
Our Town is now very different from when I came here in 1965
to help set up a computer research lab at Stanford. I was attracted to the low
density housing with one-acre minimums and enjoyed the apricot orchard on my
land that was still bearing lots of fruit. I had heard that all commercial
operations in town were being phased out, including the large quarry that was
producing decomposed granite for use on roadside paths in our town and other
places around the Bay as well as the Pink Horse Ranch and Adobe Creek Lodge
commercial recreational facilities that were to be shut down. However I was not
aware that this anti-commercial transformation had been initiated by Wallace
Stegner, who also co-founded a number of other compatible organizations
including the Committee for Green Foothills and the Trust for
When I got here this place was called “The Valley of Hearts
Delight” and there were still orchards along parts of El Camino Real and a
large horse pasture on the corner of El Camino and
However things changed as the computer and electronics
industries began to grow nearby and the name of this area changed to
Along with the gentrification of the Hills came other attitudes that I call “snootification.” Whereas nearly everyone here originally liked the off-road paths that provided short walking or riding routes between cul-de-sacs that were far apart by road, there was growing NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) opposition. For about two decades now the National Park Service has been trying to set up a so-called Anza Trail the from the Arizona-Sonora border area over toward the West Coast and up to San Francisco, including a segment through Los Altos Hills (even though the actual expedition didn’t go that way) but the Town of Los Altos Hills has so far refused to cooperate even though suitable trail routes through the town already exist. The problem is that when hearings are held about this idea, snooty residents show up saying things like “Why should we set up a route that might encourage lower class people to walk through our beautiful town?”
Pathway opposition reached a peak around the turn of the century when an “owners’ rights” group got control of the Council, removed all people from the Pathways Committee who strongly favored paths (such as me) and then staged a coup in which the officers of that committee were overthrown. The Committee then put together a plan to dismantle much of the pathway system, which was approved by the Council. However by that time the opposition had gotten organized, used an expensive referendum to block the pathway dismantling and booted the bad guys off the Council. Things have run much more smoothly in the Hills ever since, though there continues to be a major discrepancy between the town’s alleged historical preservation goals as specified in its General Plan and what is actually happening on a case-by-case basis.
Other evidence of local snootification is that some people here were proud to learn recently that a national record for the sale price of a single family home was recently set here at $100 million. Such attitudes also clearly have helped generate opposition to the preservation of Wallace Stegner’s Study as a museum, as some people have been heard to say, “Why should we set up an exhibit here that might attract outsiders to our town?”
Conclusions
I hope that the Council will overlook the erroneous action of the Planning Commission, which was both inconsistent with the Town’s General Plan and with State Law regarding preservation of preservation of a site that played a significant role in the Town’s creation, namely Stegner’s residence, and will vote in accordance with that law. Failing that, the Town will apparently be setting itself up for a valid legal action against its decision.
If the Council does decide to again ignore its General Plan then I hope that steps will be taken to modify that plan by removing the alleged goals of historical preservation so as to lower the degree of hypocrisy in future Council actions.
References
[1] Town of
[2] Town of
[3] Town of
See www.losaltoshills.ca.gov/docs/browse/cat_view/61-general-plan
[4] Town of
[6] L.D. Earnest, “Mitigated Negative
Declaration for the property at
[7] Town of Los Altos Hills, “Town History” see www.losaltoshills.ca.gov/about-lah/town-history.
[8] Los Altos
Hills Historical Society, “Preserving
Wallace Stegner’s former Study,” letter to City Council,
[9] L. Earnest, “Myths about Wallace Stegner’s Study,” Feb. 2012. See www.stanford.edu/~learnest/stegner/myths.pdf.
[10] Florence Fava, Los
Altos Hills, the colorful story, Gilbert Richards Publications, Woodside, CA,
1976.
[11] Los Altos Hills
History Committee, “Recommend removal of
erroneous historical monuments,”
See http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/lah/monuments.pdf