HOME





Searsville, California
Searsville (c.1854–1891) was a San Mateo County, California town located in what is now the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve on Corte Madera Creek and adjacent to Woodside. At the northwest corner of Sandhill Road and Portola Road is a plaque, and this location has been a California Historical Landmark since 1950. History Charles Brown, a former whaler from San Francisco purchased a portion of the Rancho Cañada de Raymundo Mexican-era land grant of John Coppinger and settled there with his wife. The newly acquired property was named the Mountain Home Ranch and previously had an adobe house built in 1839 (still located at the intersection of present day Portola Road and La Honda Road) and a sawmill. In 1852 John Smith joined Charles Brown at the Searsville site, and the next year August Eikerenkotter arrived and started a store and hotel. By 1854 John Howell Sears moved to the site, for whom the town was named based on his postal contract. Because of the Gold Rush, ther ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Searsville Dam
Searsville Dam is a masonry dam in San Mateo County, California, that was completed in 1892, one year after the founding of Stanford University, and impounds Corte Madera Creek (in the San Francisquito Creek watershed) to form a reservoir known as Searsville Reservoir or Searsville Lake. Searsville Dam is located in the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve and is owned and operated by Stanford University. Neighboring cities include Woodside and Portola Valley, California. History The dam caused the partial inundation of the small and declining town of '' Searsville'' and the Searsville Hotel, which was founded by John H. Sears in 1854 to support the local logging industry. It was owned by the Spring Valley Water Company. In the 1906 San Francisco earthquake the dam suffered a "fingers-width" crack in the concrete at the east end; however, this was patched. Description The and Searsville Dam consists of a series of interlocking concrete boulders that resemble a massively steep ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


John Howell Sears
John Howell Sears (1823–1907) was an early pioneer of Searsville and La Honda, two cities in San Mateo County, California. He directly influenced the development of these cities. History Born February 3, 1823 in Sullivan County, New York. He was living in Wayne County, Pennsylvania before arriving in San Francisco on August 1, 1850 by ship as a gold prospector during the Gold Rush. He traveled directly to the gold mines on initial arrival to the area and around Northern California to various mine locations before settling down. By 1854 Sears lands in a lumber town later to be named Searsville, during the early days before the city was developed. He built his Sears hotel on Sand Hill Road near the entrance of the city and because of his postal contract, he may have had directly influenced the naming of the town. Once the lumber industry had slowed down in Searsville, in 1862 he bought 400 acres of land in La Honda area and built the Old Store at La Honda and a hotel nearby. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Former Settlements In San Mateo County, California
A former is an object, such as a template, gauge or cutting die, which is used to form something such as a boat's hull. Typically, a former gives shape to a structure that may have complex curvature. A former may become an integral part of the finished structure, as in an aircraft fuselage, or it may be removable, being used in the construction process and then discarded or re-used. Aircraft formers Formers are used in the construction of aircraft fuselage, of which a typical fuselage has a series from the nose cone to the empennage, typically perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. The primary purpose of formers is to establish the shape of the fuselage and reduce the column length of stringers to prevent instability. Formers are typically attached to longerons, which support the skin of the aircraft. The "former-and-longeron" technique (also called stations and stringers) was adopted from boat construction, and was typical of light aircraft built until th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ghost Towns In The San Francisco Bay Area
In folklore, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes to realistic, lifelike forms. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a ''séance''. Other terms associated with it are apparition, haunt, haint, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter, spirit, spook, wraith, demon, and ghoul. The belief in the existence of an afterlife, as well as manifestations of the spirits of the dead, is widespread, dating back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. Certain religious practices—funeral rites, exorcisms, and some practices of spiritualism and ritual magic—are specifically designed to rest the spirits of the dead. Ghosts are generally described as solitary, human-like essences, though ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Cities In San Mateo County, California
A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agreed definition of the lower boundary for their size. In a narrower sense, a city can be defined as a permanent and densely populated place with administratively defined boundaries whose members work primarily on non-agricultural tasks. Cities generally have extensive systems for housing, transportation, sanitation, utilities, land use, production of goods, and communication. Their density facilitates interaction between people, government organizations, and businesses, sometimes benefiting different parties in the process, such as improving the efficiency of goods and service distribution. Historically, city dwellers have been a small proportion of humanity overall, but following two centuries of unprecedented and rapid urbanization, more ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth List of governors of California, governor of and then-incumbent List of United States senators from California, United States senator representing California) and his wife, Jane Stanford, Jane, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., Leland Jr. The university admitted its first students in 1891, opening as a Mixed-sex education, coeducational and non-denominational institution. It struggled financially after Leland died in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, university Provost (education), provost Frederick Terman inspired an entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial culture to build a self-sufficient local industry (later Silicon Valley). In 1951, Stanfor ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) is a public agency of the City and County of San Francisco that provides water, wastewater, and electric power services to the city. The SFPUC also provides wholesale water service to an additional 1.9 million customers in three other San Francisco Bay Area counties. Functions The SFPUC manages a complex water supply system consisting of reservoirs, tunnels, pipelines and treatment facilities and is the third largest municipal utility agency in California. The SFPUC provides fresh water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and other sources to 2.7 million customers for residential, commercial, and industrial uses. About one-third of its delivered water is sent to customers within San Francisco, while the remaining two-thirds are sent to customers in Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties. The SFPUC has been an clean power provider for more than 100 years, when it began generating hydro power for the construction of the O'Sh ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Floodplain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high Discharge (hydrology), discharge.Goudie, A. S., 2004, ''Encyclopedia of Geomorphology'', vol. 1. Routledge, New York. The soils usually consist of clays, silts, sands, and gravels deposited during floods. Because of regular flooding, floodplains frequently have high soil fertility since nutrients are deposited with the flood waters. This can encourage farming; some important agricultural regions, such as the Nile and Mississippi Basin, Mississippi Drainage basin, river basins, heavily exploit floodplains. Agricultural and urban regions have developed near or on floodplains to take advantage of the rich soil and freshwater. However, the Flood risk, risk of inundation has led to increasing efforts to Flood control, control flooding. Formation Most floodplai ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lumberjack
Lumberjack is a mostly North American term for workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees. The term usually refers to loggers in the era before 1945 in the United States, when trees were felled using hand tools and dragged by oxen to rivers. The work was difficult, dangerous, intermittent, low-paying, and involved living in primitive conditions. However, the men built a traditional culture that celebrated strength, masculinity, confrontation with danger, and resistance to modernization. Term The term lumberjack is of Canadian derivation. The first attested use of the term combining its two components comes from an 1831 letter to the Cobourg, Ontario, ''Star and General Advertiser'' in the following passage: "my misfortunes have been brought upon me chiefly by an incorrigible, though perhaps useful, race of mortals called lumberjacks, whom, however, I would name the Cossacks of Upper Canada, who, having been reared among the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Gold Rush
A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Greece, New Zealand, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, the United States, and Canada while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere. In the 19th century, the wealth that resulted was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself proved unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made large fortunes, and merchants and transportation facilities made large profits. The resulting increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. Historians have written extensively about the mass migration, trade, colonization, and environmental history associated with gold rushes. Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free-for-al ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Adobe
Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of earthen construction, or various architectural styles like Pueblo Revival or Territorial Revival. Most adobe buildings are similar in appearance to cob and rammed earth buildings. Adobe is among the earliest building materials, and is used throughout the world. Adobe architecture has been dated to before 5,100 BP. Description Adobe bricks are rectangular prisms small enough that they can quickly air dry individually without cracking. They can be subsequently assembled, with the application of adobe mud to bond the individual bricks into a structure. There is no standard size, with substantial variations over the years and in different regions. In some areas a popular size measured weighing about ; in other ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Woodside, California
Woodside is a incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It has a council–manager system of government. The population of the town was 5,309 at the 2020 census. The town's population has a median household income above $250,000 and median home price above $5 million. The town is known for its quaint and small town feel despite being close to Silicon Valley, and is home to many venture capital and investment firms. History The Woodside area was originally home to the Ohlone tribe. In 1769, led by Gaspar de Portolá, Spanish explorers searching for San Francisco Bay camped at a site near Woodside. In 1840, the land that was to be the future Woodside became part of a Mexican land grant, Rancho Cañada de Raymundo, which in 1841 was granted to an Englishman, John Coppinger. Woodside is said to be the oldest English-speaking settlement in the southern part of the San Francisco Peninsula. The first English-speaking settle ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]