Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph
Postal clerk Gordon Stouffer distributes mail with an audience of students from the former Country Day School on Lyndon Avenue.
Picture From the Past
Town post office relocated many times since the 1800s
By John S. Baggerly
In the 1800s, mail was one of the few ways that kept small towns in touch with the outside world, and Los Gatos was no different. The first mail coming into Los Gatos was in 1849 by a horse running three times a week from San Jose to Santa Cruz. During this period, the county sheriff doubled as postmaster of the San Jose District, which included Los Gatos. He received an annual salary of $8,000.
One of Los Gatos' earliest postmasters lost his job for spending too much time in his dance hall next door. This was in the middle of the last century, when stagecoaches carried the mail from San Francisco to Alviso. From there, the dancing postmaster routed the mail to various localities, including Los Gatos. The mail was taken by stagecoach to Los Gatos and points south, including the mountains.
Los Gatos historian Bill Wulf learned from Santa Cruz newspapers that a woman of that city once wrote a fiery letter to Congress complaining about the lack of mail service to her town. Congress acted and the stagecoach bearing mail into Los Gatos continued down into Santa Cruz.
Los Gatos briefly acquired a post office of sorts at the Ten Mile Hotel on S. Santa Cruz Avenue--present site of the Toll House Hotel. Another Los Gatos post office site, in 1893, was in the Beckwith Building opposite 27 E. Main St., now occupied by the Southern Kitchen. Other post office locations followed.
At one time, the post office took quarters in the Farmers' Union Building on the east side of N. Santa Cruz Avenue, a few yards north of W. Main Street. Fire at the turn of the century wiped out most of downtown Los Gatos, mainly around the intersection of W Main Street and N. Santa Cruz Avenue.
Built four years after the mid-town fire was the Rankin Block at W. Main and Front streets, the latter now called Montebello Way. This building housed a post office for a number of years.
There was a time when the Los Gatos post office was located on the east side of N. Santa Cruz Avenue just north of Royce Avenue. The post office functioned from 1948 until 1966, when the present-day facility was built at 101 S. Santa Cruz Ave., facing the Town Plaza Park and Montebello Way.
Today's post office was dedicated in 1966, according to a plaque in front. In January 1993, Kathie L. Faupel transferred here from the Campbell post office to become our postmaster. She succeeded Pat Moore and John Panighetti, who both continue to live in Los Gatos.
Postmasterships were a juicy political plum prior to 1936, when the president of the United States used the job as a reward for men who supported his candidacy. Examples of "in today, out tomorrow" politics were Democrat Lee Darneal and Republican Neal Vodden, both local businessmen. When Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected, postmasterships became permanent. Darneal and Postmistress Lutheria Cunningham of Saratoga benefited by the law.
Subsequent Los Gatos postmasters have included Ed Roberts, W. John Whisenant and Cliff Hamontree, all for short terms.
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
