Early Los Altos
By Don McDonald, Special to the Town Crier
 Maria, Menzo, Charles and Ray Loucks pose in front of their Los Altos home, circa 1912. |
Note: This article will be added to the Los Altos History Museum’s “Family Tree,” a computer display with touch-activated stories and photographs of people and places important to Los Altos history. The Family Tree is designed to allow additions such as this one about Los Altos pioneer Menzo Loucks, and visitors are encouraged to suggest others to museum staff.
Menzo Loucks (1849-1924), farmer, orchardist and horse broker, was one of Los Altos’ pioneers. He served in the Union Army during the last year of the Civil War. Various jobs in Minnesota and Illinois followed until he decided to take the train west in the early 1880s.
He soon arrived in Santa Clara County, where he found a job working for Captain W.W. Brown, whose Oak Grove ranch was at the southwest corner of the San Antonio Road-El Camino Real intersection. In time he was able to buy the A.P. Hotaling Ranch in nearby Mayfield (now Palo Alto).
He then went into business for himself, buying a livery stable and establishing a horse-drawn line between Mayfield’s Southern Pacific station and the new Stanford University. When a fire destroyed his livery stable, Loucks bought what remained of Don Sedundo Robles’ Mayfield ranch, which produced hay as its principal crop.
Menzo and Maria move to Los Altos
New vistas opened when, after a family visit with relatives in Seattle, the Loucks stopped for a few days in Ashland, Ore. There he explored the idea of buying range horses, mostly mustangs, in eastern Oregon and Northern California. He envisioned shipping the horses to Mayfield, where he would then break, train and sell them. For this purpose, he decided in 1903 to buy the 34-acre Oak Grove ranch, his first place of employment, which was then for sale by Captain Brown’s widow. Its proximity to Mayfield was probably a factor in his decision to buy it.
Brown built Oak Grove’s two-story farmhouse in the 1870s. Its impressive facade showcased the elaborate Victorian style so popular at the time. The house featured durable timbers, a mahogany balustrade, a carved teak staircase and household fixtures he’d brought around the Horn from Boston.
The mustang venture
He also turned to developing his land for cash crops - grains, hay and orchards of apricots and prunes. He planted vegetables and raised cattle, rabbits, pigs and chickens for food. Hired help, sunrise to sunset, cost him $1 a day, and many workers came from the large, nearby Espinoza family.
Other Loucks family members also worked hard. Maria fed up to 15 people three meals a day. She also performed such necessary household chores as washing, ironing and soap-making. Their sons, before walking three miles to Whisman School, cleaned the stables, fed the animals and milked the cows.
Through it all, Oak Grove’s farmhouse - reputedly the oldest in Los Altos - proved to be an ever-solid refuge. The 1906 earthquake caused only minor damage, knocking the tops off two of the house’s eight brick chimneys.
Loucks’ declining fortunes
Younger son Ray entered politics briefly as a councilman in Mountain View, where he lived for several years before returning to Oak Grove. He subdivided what remained of the family ranch in 1953, naming Loucks Avenue and cul de sacs for himself and his wife, Rilma.
The venerable house’s obituary appeared in August 1953 in a Los Altos News article: “100-Year-Old Home Demolished; Fixtures Came Around the Horn.”
McDonald is a member of the Los Altos History Museum Association.
