Although San José is one of the newest of cities, it is one of the oldest of communities in the State of California. It has a history both rich and varied. From the Spanish Conquistadors to the Mission padres to the mountain men voyageurs’ to the 49’ers, San José has been a glowing hope for the future. And so it remains. Here in this beautiful valley one group of travellers after another have found a tremendous opportunity to fulfill their dreams. It has provided a vision of a better life to those who arrived as overland emigrants in covered wagons or in tempest-tossed boats from lands at the other side of the Pacific Rim. It has always stood for things simple and profound: freedom and hope.

Those things that occurred in our past are more valuable to the present than any other commodity This has been a rapid and at times dizzying journey from the Llano de los robles to the Valley of Heart’s Delight to Silicon Valley, but it has been a journey filled with certain constants. The pueblo of San José is quite visible in the agricultural hub of early Twentieth century San José , just as that entrepreneurial place is present in the rising metropolitan high technology center of our own time. Whether it was cattle on the mission pasture or cherries and prunes in a crate or information onto a chip, San José has always been innovating, and improving. We remain so today. As we reap the benefits of a preeminent City of the future, we must never forget the lessons and values of our past. For generations San José has been the destination of choice and a wonderful home for my family and hundreds of thousands of others. In these pages we will relive the founding and emergence of our City as recounted by one who knows it better than any other. Enjoy the trip.

Few San Joséans gathered what was happening between 1944 and 1960, when their home town’s population jumped from 76,500 to 204,196. The aver-age citizen paid little heed to news stories and official reports announcing arrival of a brand new economic era—the industrial. If he tried to interpret them at all, it was probably after getting lost in a labyrinth of newly-opened streets, or on receiving his tax bill for a fast growing collection of new schools and parks.

This period witnessed the valley’s seemingly sudden transition from a fruit growing area to a manufacturing center. It saw San José change with equal speed from a farm town to a metropolis. Yet it cannot take all the credit—or blame—for the community’s industrialization. San José’s industrial needs may have been slow in germinating, but American pioneers sowed them almost concurrently with the city’s incorporation.

Blacksmiths and wagonmakers were San José’s first producers of heavy equipment. Danish Peter Lassen engaged in blacksmithing here for a short time during the winter of 1840-41. But unfortunately for posterity, he left no descriptive account of this venture. In the spring of 1841, he moved to Santa Cruz, where he built a sawmill. In 1844, he obtained from the Mexican government the 22,206-acre Rancho Bosquejo in what is now Tehama County. His name has since been perpetuated by Lassen County and Lassen Volcanic National Park.

After Lassen, a German wagonmaker, John Balbach, arrived in December, 1849. Balbach came to America in 1848, and to California in quest of gold. He lost about everything he owned in a disastrous crossing of the Colorado River, but after a recuperative sojourn in Los Angeles, he headed northward. During what he intended to be an overnight stop in San José, someone stole his horse, saddle, and bridle. Stranded, he took a blacksmithing job to earn enough money to continue his journey to the mines, but got no farther. San José offered more gold to a man of his craft than he could ever hope to dig from the Mother Lode.

As founder of the Pioneer Carriage Factory, Balbach soon established himself as the city’s leading blacksmith and wagonmaker. He first located at about what is now 40 West Santa Clara Street, and later at the corner of Second and Fountain. In 1852 he reputedly made the first commercially manufactured plow on the Pacific Coast, and, the following year, he produced 50 of them. After his marriage in 1854 to Miss Minna Berner, native of Germany, he became the father of six sons and three daughters.

Balbach became an American citizen in 1855, thereby qualifying for two terms as a City Alderman, and five years as a member of the Board of Education. By 1877, the Great Register listed him as Capitalist, and long before his death in August 3, 1896, he had the satisfaction of seeing three of his sons take over the business that he had founded many years earlier. Today, he is best remembered for a downtown street that has borne his name for more than a century.

Other blacksmiths and vehicle builders, seeing Balbach’s success, quickly followed his lead. By 1875, the city boasted 52 blacksmiths and 17 well-established carriage and wagon shops. Most of the black-smiths derived the bulk of their income from horse-shoeing, but the carriage and wagon men were manufacturers in the full sense of the term. Among the most important of the latter, were Clark S. Crydenwise, David Hatman, Amable Normandin, James and George Fitzgerald, Adolph Greeninger, and Hugh Young.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR