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Published on 12/21/1998 All articles from this issue

Grocery shopping by horse back in early Los Altos days

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Voice of the Past

Edgar McDowell's family settled in Los Altos in the 1890s when his father, John McDowell, moved west from Ashland, Ohio, to attend Stanford University in the class of 1899.

As early settlers of the town, the McDowells became life-long friends of Paul Shoup, the president and vice chairman of Southern Pacific Railroad. It was McDowell's father who helped Shoup sell the initial lots of Los Altos Land Company in 1907. His commission was paid in lots, two of which were on the first block of Main Street.

McDowell followed in his father's footsteps, graduating from Stanford in 1926 and working for the Southern Pacific Railroad. He moved up the ranks of the company, retiring in 1968.

McDowell was also Scout Master of Los Altos Boy Scout Troop 37 for seven years in the 1920s and 1930s.

McDowell shared the following account during a 1991 interview.

In 1907 railroad construction began, the town site was laid out, streets named, lots surveyed, and curbs and sidewalks installed. The first store to go up in 1909 was a hardware on Main Street, owned by the Eshcenbergers. That was followed by the two-story Shoup Building at the corner of Second and Main streets. The population of the town wasn't much more than 1,000 then. Our telephone number was "56."

I remember my father describing protracted discussions at his early Land Company meetings about the design and location of the hitching posts for the many horses on Main Street, since horses were the way many folks got around in those days. People used to get their groceries on horseback.

The Shoup Building had a large meeting hall on the second floor and a grocery store downstairs. Practically every boy in town was in the Boy Scouts. There were no movies or television, and Scouting was really the only game in town. Before the Scout Hall was built, our troop met on the second floor of the Shoup Building. All the boys were admonished not to be overactive, because it would dislodge plaster from the first-floor ceiling onto the groceries below.

In 1922 the leading men in town met in the Paul Shoup home and decided to build a Scout Hall. Shoup donated the land and Alan Cranston's father chaired the fund-raising committee for the building, which stood for 40 years on First Street between Main and Whitney. The hall had a basketball court, a locker room, stage, kitchen, offices for the Boy and Girl Scout leaders, and a small fireplace-equipped meeting room that also was used for the town library. We were told that it was the best Scout facility of any troop in California.

- Courtesy of Donna Shoemaker and the Oral History Program of Los Altos History House.