FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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EARLY ROADS OF THE AREA By Nita Spangler In 1853, when the San Francisco-Santa Clara County line was San Francisquito Creek, the Board of Supervisors meeting in San Francisco on November 14 authorized a road survey of county roads from the Redwood Embarcadero. There were three. A lumber boom was going full blast in the redwoods west of Redwood Creek. Lumber, posts, and shingles were dragged and hauled to small ships that waited for high tide at small docks at an old rancho landing. San Francisco was a ready market for building supplies, needed to replace the structures lost in recurring fires and to keep up with growth. In 1853, a squatter village with perhaps six or seven small structures was thriving at the Embarcadero, housing needed services for blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, teamsters, butchers, and other essential trades, including a saloonkeeper or two. The village boasted a Main Street that had recently been surveyed by a crew from the U.S. Coastal Survey. These surveyors produced a true North-South line for the street, perpendicular to the base line they had established between Ravenswood Point and a hill on what is now the Sequoia Hospital property. The base line itself was part of a larger endeavor to map the bay by triangulation. Main Street connected the Embarcadero to the main county road between San Francisco and San Jose. The intersection at County Road also happened to be the juncture of a trail and hauling route from the redwoods near today’s Woodside. This was the beginning of the busy Five Points intersection where El Camino Real, Woodside Road and Main Street would meet today but for a huge concrete traffic separation. In December 1853, Deputy County Surveyor M. M. ODwyer signed and delivered the new road survey. Of the three South County Roads surveyed, the first was Martin Road, leading west from Main Street on the south bank of Redwood Creek to present-day Woodside and crossing over to San Francisquito Creek (along today’s Whiskey Hill Road) and Dennis Martin’s Blacksmith Shop. The distance was 6 miles 59 chains. Since 1846, Dennis Martin had been logging in the redwoods, sending most of his lumber to Santa Clara and San Jose. With its own Catholic church and burial ground, Martin’s settlement had one of the first water-powered mills, but he could not later prove title to his lands and lost it all. The second County Road was the Swasey Road, to Oakley’s Mill, which left Martin’s Road near the summit (today’s Woodside-Cañada Road intersection) continued through Cañada Raymundo to Edwin Oakley’s mill just beyond Tripp’s Store (Cañada Rd. intersection) to West Union Creek and Squealer Gulch. The mill was 7 miles and 13 chains from the Embarcadero. The third County Road in the official survey was Whipple Road which began at Willard Whipple’s mill by West Union Creek in Cañada Raymundo and followed Cordilleras Creek canyon down to the savanna plain. The road then took a direct line across the flatlands (as mud and dust permitted) to a waterfront loading area on the opposite bank from Main Street. It was 5 miles 47 chains. Whipple was a Mormon who came to San Francisco with a steam mill which he erected on West Union Creek in 1852. It was a substantial enterprise for the time, but Whipple suffered a fire and an explosion, and his lumbering lasted only three years. His first mill site many years later became the site of a large country home and his road is its driveway which crosses the Cañada to Edgewood Road. Today’s Edgewood Road was called Cordilleras Road until 1946 when San Mateo County widened and realigned 2.883 miles between Cañada Road and Alameda de las Pulgas. At that time, the road was renamed to match a connecting street in Redwood City’s 1888 Wellesley Park Subdivision. A portion of Cordilleras Road was bypassed and kept its name. At the time of the 1946 Edgewood Road improvement, there were 10 structures adjoining the right-of-way. Today, Edgewood Road provides the main park entrance and marks the north boundary of Edgewood County Park Natural Preserve and the southern boundary of the Pulgas Open Space owned by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. Portions of the older road through the canyon are visible north of the summit on a steep canyon wall. Hikers in Edgewood County Park will recognize Old Stage Road for its use during earlier times in the Cordilleras-Edgewood Road saga. Here is an opportunity for today’s drivers--many of whom never experienced the vicissitudes of automobile travel on steep, unpaved mountain roads in a "machine" that bucked and boiled--to think about the good old days. |
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