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Published on 05/19/1999 All articles from this issue

BBQ event a tribute to Santa Clara Valley orchards

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Special to the Town Crier

The Orchard Heritage Blossom Faire & BBQ, celebrating orchard history and preservation of remaining lands, will include Los Altos restaurants Armadillo Willy's and Le Boulanger among contributors when the event gets under way 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, at Orchard Heritage Park, located at the Sunnyvale Community Center, 550 E. Remington Drive, Sunnyvale.

The event includes a barbecue from Armadillo Willy's, old-time music, orchard talks and tours, book signings by the authors and illustrators of the "Valley of Heart's Delight," children's activities, an "old-time triathlon" (sack race, water balloon toss and marshmallow throw) and silent auction.

Organizer Bobbe Smirni said the event also will pay tribute to orchard families who have made up the "Valley of Heart's Delight," as the Santa Clara Valley was called pre-Silicon Valley. Among the families being honored is the Taaffe family of Los Altos Hills, descendants of the Martin Murphy Jr.family, Santa Clara Valley's oldest orchard family.

Martin Murphy Jr. and his family purchased the Spanish land grant Rancho Pastoria de Los Borregos (now the city of Sunnyvale) in 1849, becoming the first English-speaking family to settle in the valley and the first to import farm machinery and plant orchards in the area.

Martin later bought the 2,800-acre Rancho La Purissima Concepcion (now the town of Los Altos Hills) in 1855, which he gave to his daughter Elizabeth and her husband, William Post Taaffe, as a wedding present in 1863. The Taaffe family cultivated apricots, prunes and wheat on the Los Altos Hills site.

The land has never been entirely out of the family's hands since then. Taaffe family members still live on portions of the ranch in Los Altos Hills.

Smirni said 95 percent of the original valley orchards, which comprised the second most fertile valley in the world, are now gone.

Proceeds from the event will go toward an Orchard Heritage Park Interpretive Exhibit, which Smirni described as "an educational tribute to our agricultural history."

The exhibit would be an open-air pavilion, Smirni described, including panels that would offer orchard history, a walkway comprising engraved bricks paying tribute to contributors, an amphitheater for talks and demonstrations, a small stage and landscaping.

She said $160,000 of the $500,000 needed has already been raised. She hopes for an exhibit groundbreaking by spring of 2000.

Orchard Heritage Park is a 10-acre working apricot orchard next to the community center, which the city of Sunnyvale dedicated in 1992 through grass-roots effort of local residents.