CHARLESTON ROAD
INDEPENDENCE AVE .
Chickentown
A Bird ’ s-Eye View
By Eric Flint Special Contributor
My name is Eric Flint and I ’ m a new member of the MVHA . Recently , I took an anthropology / archaeology class at Foothill for the fun of it . As a result of the class , I became interested in the early history / prehistory of the Mountain View area . I ’ ve lived in Mountain View for almost 25 years now , so I figured it was finally time to learn more about the history . Initially , I started looking at maps and then aerial photos . The MVHA has a very nice collection in the History Room at the public library . ( That ’ s where I met MVHA President Pamela Baird , which led indirectly to this article ). But the photos in the History Center still felt hitor-miss .
In my quest for more / better photos I ran across a reference to the Aerial Photography Archives of the University of California , Santa Barbara . Intrigued by the name , I looked into it , and I ’ m glad I did . Per their website , “ The UCSB Library has more than 4,500 flights which add up to more than 2.4 million individual images .” While obviously not all of them cover Mountain View , a surprisingly large number actually do . The images are relatively well indexed , and maybe even better , many are already digitally scanned and available for download in the public domain .
In keeping with the theme of this newsletter , I searched for photos of the “ Chickentown ” area from 1930s . Aerial images from flight ( C-1289 ) consist of 14 images of the northwest corner of Mountain View taken in December 1930 . The photos were commissioned by the City of Mountain View . Makes you wonder what they were thinking about back then , as that area was way outside of city limits at that time .
Detail of the Corner of Charleston and Independence , Mountain View , in 1930
SOURCE : Flight C-1289 , frame Z7 , 12 / 1930 . Courtesy of UCSB Library Geospatial Collection .
At first the photo looks like lightly inhabited farmland . But this area touches on many parts of the history of Mountain View . The land was still unincorporated Santa Clara County . The Bayshore Highway and portions of San Antonio Road didn ’ t exist . At first it was very hard to figure out what I was viewing as so much has changed over the last 91 years . I eventually recognized Charleston Road , and after that , everything else slowly fell into place . The main road T-ing into Charleston in the middle of the frame is what is now Rengstorff . The road to its immediate left is Independence Avenue .
While interesting and fun , the real power of the archive is found when you zoom in on a photo . The following image has Charleston running at a diagonal from upper right to middle left . One can begin to make out more details such as the homestead on the left with what looks like cows milling around in a feed lot . More relevant to us are the collection of long narrow buildings on relatively small lots . This is the beginning of Chickentown , centered on Independence Avenue .
This photo confirms that yes , indeed , this area was Chickentown . It was exciting to confirm , through the magic of this historical photo archive , the history of an area of Mountain View that few people know .
In the next newsletter I ’ ll describe more about how I ’ ve searched and utilized photo archives .
5