By Don McDonald
 COURTESY OF DON MCDONALD John and Elizabeth McKenzie talk to Dan O’Donnell at the McKenzie Park dedication ceremonies on March 18, 1968. |
Note: The following account will be added to the Los Altos History Museum’s “Family Tree,” a structure with touch-activated computer displays of stories and photos describing people and institutions important in Los Altos history. The Family Tree is designed to allow additions like this, and visitors are encouraged to suggest other topics to the museum staff.
Los Altos presently has 12 parks. Two of them, Mc- Kenzie Park and Heritage Oaks Park, are unique because they came from a single property ownership - that of Michael McKenzie, one of the pioneer orchardists in southern Los Altos. Between these two parks lies winding Altos Oaks Drive, another piece of his former orchard that became one of the city’s premier medical office locations.
Michael McKenzie’s parents arrived in Vermont as part of the great exodus to America caused by the Irish potato famine in the 1840s. In 1888 their 24-year-old son, Michael, headed westward. Learning of the Stanford Ranch and its famous trotting horses when in Salt Lake City, he promptly came and found a job as a horse trainer. The next year he went to San Rafael to work as an orchardist. There he met Mary Byrne, who had recently come from Ireland. They were married in 1896, and because Michael liked living down the Peninsula, they purchased 10 acres “near Loyola Station” which abutted Permanente Creek - what is now the Lundy Lane area. Besides farming his new orchard, Michael also worked for the Jesuits on nearby properties. Among them were the adjacent 650 acres planned for Loyola University (which later became the Los Altos Golf & Country Club) and the Villa Maria in Stevens Creek Canyon.
The four McKenzie children were born in Los Altos: John Rosario (1897), Bridget (1899), Ellen (1902) and Robert (1904). John recalled that when he was a young lad of about five, a Montgomery brother taught him to fish on Permanente Creek using a kernel of corn for bait. At the time, James Montgomery was helping his famous brother, Professor John Montgomery, in some of his experiments with gliders along nearby Magdalena Avenue, and they were staying with the McKenzie family.
Within a short time, Michael acquired 14 acres with a five-room house built in 1900 between Fremont and Miramonte avenues. Although he had already sold their original 10 acres to Santa Clara College in 1904, the family stayed on the college property until 1907 because Michael had a serious bout of diphtheria. They finally moved onto the new property when Michael hired on as a laborer for the Peninsula Railroad then being built. He became a foreman and worked for the railroad until the line was completed to Saratoga. The McKenzie children attended San Antonio School, Mtn. View Grammar School, St. Joseph’s School in San Jose, Notre Dame High School and Santa Clara Prep.
Michael planted his land with apricots, prunes, pears, walnuts and apples. He built a dam on Permanente Creek to form a little lake for irrigation purposes. The dam’s concrete abutments can still be seen in Permanente Creek at today’s Heritage Oaks Park. Presumably large (possibly 2-by-10 redwood) planks were fitted between the abutments when it was time to irrigate. From the little lake that was then formed, a centrifugal force pump and various pipes conveyed the water to his orchards. After irrigation, the planks would be removed. Remnants of the pump and pipes were still there when the city bought the property, but they were all removed as attractive nuisances before Heritage Oaks Park was officially opened to the public.
During the World War I years the market for dried fruits stayed firm, even though Germany had previously been the biggest buyer. At times, the McKenzies received as much for apricot pits as for the dried fruit, since they were used for bitter almond flavoring, charcoal for gas masks and the extraction of oil for cosmetics. Michael also planted a small vineyard, and during Prohibition (from 1919 to 1933) he made the government allowance of 200 gallons of wine a year. His grapes included Zinfandel, and it is reported that he aged his wine for four years.
Michael gradually bought four other parcels of land and eventually owned 36 acres. He gift-deeded half interest in one of these parcels to his son John, who had been managing the nearby property of the famous thespian Frank Bacon. John once worked for a short time in San Francisco, and he liked to tell about attending the 1920 Democratic presidential convention. It was on this parcel fronting Fremont Avemue just south of Springer Road that John built his house before marrying Elizabeth Voss of Cupertino in 1930.
Because this county land was squarely between the two towns, he always said that he “dug his basement in Mountain View and built his house in Los Altos.” In this home, John and Elizabeth raised three children, John Edward (1931), Caroline (1933) and Thomas (1937).
Caroline, now Mrs. Appling, recalls that when she was a young girl, the McKenzie cousins would sometimes row around in a small boat on the lake formed by their dam on Permanente Creek. Her cousin, Pat O’Donnell, actually lived at one time in that old McKenzie home on the creek.
McDonald is a longtime Los Altos resident and member of the Los Altos History Museum Association.
