Searsville (c.1854–1891) was a

San Mateo County San Mateo County ( ), officially the County of San Mateo, is a county (United States), county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 764,442. Redwood City, California, Redwood City is th ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

town located in what is now the

Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve The Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a nature preserve and biological field station formally established as a reserve in 1973. The biological preserve is owned by Stanford University, and is part of the Stanford School of Humanities and Scie ...

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 A California Historical Landmark (CHL) is a building, structure, site, or place in the U.S. state of California that has been determined to have statewide historical landmark significance. Criteria Historical significance is determined by meetin ...

since 1950.

History

Charles Brown, a former

whaler A whaler or whaling ship is a specialized vessel, designed or adapted for whaling: the catching or processing of whales. Terminology The term ''whaler'' is mostly historic. A handful of nations continue with industrial whaling, and one, Jap ...

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 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, ...

, there was a strong demand for lumber in order to quickly build local towns. Searsville was a

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 us ...

settlement of a hundred or more people and the heart of a robust logging industry. This bustling town had the Eikerenkotter's Hotel, William Lloyd's blacksmith shop, post office, a school, saloons including Cutter’s Saloon, dwellings and a store called the Searsville Exchange. When the sawmills ran out of timber, the town died down. Because of the topography of Searsville being located in a

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 (hydrolog ...

, the town would have never survived long.

Closure of the town

In 1887 the land, including the town, was sold to Spring Valley Water Works and they created the Searsville Dam, completed in 1892. There are conflicting stories on if the existing Searsville buildings were all removed before the water filled the dam or not, or if the town's residents were vacated. The water in the dam had an issue with silt and was not drinkable, and starting in 1922 the lake was used as a local swimming hole. For decades local families would swim and boat on the lake, but, in 1975,

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 ...

closed the lake to the public when making it part of the

. There are rumors of the "ghosts of Searsville” from the vanished town, living in the bottom of Searsville Lake.

References

{{SF Bay Area Cities in San Mateo County, California Ghost towns in the San Francisco Bay Area Former settlements in San Mateo County, California Submerged places in the United States Reportedly haunted locations in California

History

Closure of the town

See also

References