| 6. Transportation |
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The
Alameda
Mission Santa Clara served as the parish church for the
first settlers of San Jose. To encourage travel between
San Jose and the mission, a four-mile road, The Alameda,
was built in 1799. The road was lined with irrigation
ditches and willow trees. Maintenance was costly, so tolls
were charged for awhile in the mid 1800s: 10 cents for
buggies and $1 for stages. Still a major road today, The
Alameda is a California Community Millennium Trail.
Stagecoaches & Trolleys
The first stage service in California started in 1849
between San Jose and San Francisco. Stagecoaches crossing
the Santa Cruz Mountains also stopped in Santa Clara.
In 1868, a horse drawn trolley on a narrow gauge railroad
was built on The Alameda, the first in the West. This
line was replaced in 1888 with California's first electric
trolley which ran down Franklin Street until 1938. The
popular Blossom Line tour went through the orchards.
Railroads
The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad began service
in 1864 and Santa Clara was one of only two depots along
the way. The Santa Clara Depot is the oldest continually
operating station in the West and is on the National Register
of Historic Places. Mail, freight and passenger trains
such as the Coast Daylight, Lark, Del Monte and Suntan
Special operated through this junction. |
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| Highways |
| As Santa Clara grew, better roads were needed.
Local streets in the Old Quad area were paved in the early 1900s
and streets connecting Santa Clara to other towns became major
roads. Farming roads like Homestead, Lawrence Station, and Stevens
Creek evolved into the thoroughfares of today. In the 1960s
the County of Santa Clara started the expressway system to serve
commuters traveling between home and work in Silicon Valley. |
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