Before Silicon Valley Was Silicon Valley: The 170-Year-Old Store Tour

Welcome to another episode of Silicon Valley Front Row. I'm Steve and we're at the Old Woodside Store today. Here we're in between San Jose and San Francisco, beautiful countryside. This store it's from the 1800s right after the gold rush and today they're trying to restore what everything looked like. So we're going to walk around, we're going to show you some of the way people lived Mr. Tripp was the owner, he moved here from the east coast, moved to this area and developed this store that had a post, it was a postmaster, there's a dentist as well. So we'll go around and show you what it looked like and this is minutes away from Silicon Valley. Prices are from the 1880s. Can you tell us a little bit about this store, like what does it signify, so we represent it right now from the 1880s because we actually have people that are still around that remember coming here as kids or in 1809. So a lot of people come remember coming here as kids and they're able to restore that time period but it was also um they can open 1854 so we have a time period around that like these prices are from the 1880s so we're trying to have 1854 is when the store was and this is where Mr. Tripp moved here. Here from New York area in the early 1849 and then he was a dentist in San Francisco but he didn't really like it over there so he moved down here became a logger for a couple years just like three or so years and he was also a games writer and also a tires parker since so it was a career there. Can I ask a bit how his dentistry operated and how much it cost? So it was around two dollars every two people that was like what the main thing he was doing around here so he was in charge of all that but he was also in charge of making sure that like you know people had health insurance so he could pull out people. It was founded back in 1854 by Matthias Parkhurst and Dr. R.O. Tripp. They were serving the loggers in the area and it was one of the first-ever stores between San Francisco and San Jose. Dr. Tripp advertised that anything you wanted he'd sell so he made frequent trips up to San Francisco to get supplies but in some of the So he was a very well-known character and this was a community gathering spot so every year on the first Sunday in May we try to take a step back in time and see what life used to be like whether it's churning butter, sawing logs, making shingles, or trying out some of our old-fashioned equipment. So we have two washer machines here. Over there is our old washer and over here is the new washer machine. Let's see how this works. You close the cover. You agitate the clothes with the handle here and then. So there's like the spinning part. That's the spinning part because when you turn the handle it spins it right and then instead of having to bring it out by hand like you used to do you have the ringer. So through it went and this was much easier on your hands than having to bring it out. It's not a dryer. You had to still dry it on the line but this was to wring out your clothes. The old washer before the new washer was invented. So you'd keep it moving with your hands. Then you would use the scrub board. You'd have some lye soap. Scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub. However much you needed to do. But the hard part on your hands. Well two hard parts on your hands. Lye soap and the lye was really hard on the hands and the skin. And then wringing it out. There are legends that women would sometimes develop arthritis in their hands just from wringing out the laundry. We're making shingles. And this is how they made them 150 years ago. With using this tool which is called a fro and using this tool which is called a mallet. And normally your shingles would have been taller than we're making them today. But this is for example. So we're going to take the fro. This is your job now. We're going to lay the fro here. And then we're going to take the mallet. And you're going to make a good shingle. We do have a little knot I see in this one. Okay and then we would. Yeah and this is how they made wood shingles 100 years ago. You look on the roof. You see there'd be quite a few of them up there. It's a long process. And it's water proof water that's involved in it right? Pretty much yeah. I'm not going to say it's 100% waterproof but it you know it is pretty water resistant yes. This is a bank. These are little banks yeah. So back in the day when a penny could actually buy something. Yeah. The parents would encourage their children to save their pennies. The banks helped in that manner. So we'll show you how they work here. Go ahead and put a press over here very lightly. Okay how about this one? Put a penny there and the whale. This is Jonah and the whale. Right over here in this level. Press kind of hard. And okay. When was this made? Pre-1900s. Pre-1900s. Yeah they're over 100 years old. Amazing. Okay now put one on the bulldog's nose. Flat on the nose. Press on the tails. Wow. Let's vibrate this a little bit. Oh almost there you go. Wow. Okay very good. They work really well for being 107 years old. Sometimes the internal parts are made out of hot metal and they do wear over time and you can't get replacement parts. Yes yes. The unit is retired. So tell us more. This is like the stuff. This is a replica or this is what exactly it looks like. This is what this is what it looks like. In fact this very very bar top right here is from the store. You see how wide that piece of wood is? Yeah there's no way you could find a piece of wood that wide. Hi I'm my name is Sonia Schell and this is the banjo and this is Johnny Campbell playing the fiddle and Phyllis Erck with the dobro. We're playing bluegrass and old time music and we're here at the Woodside Store day to celebrate what life would be like in the 1850s. So would this music would be similar what they played around that time you would say? And even the instruments would be similar? Oh that's awesome. Now banjo came from Africa originally with slaves and then it was developed into this style about the mid-1800s in Virginia. And what are some of the songs the name of some of the songs you're playing? Do they have names or any style? Old Joe Clark. It's like old time string band music. So this is the blacksmith. This is our blacksmith. A little bit about how this works. The forge is in the back and you see there is no chimney through the roof so we're not going to have a fire. But that is the forge in the back the bellows to the left which has oxygen to increase the heat of the fire. But like the poster here says in the old days a blacksmith or a farrier and a farrier is a person who takes horseshoes and actually applies them to the shoe or the hoof of an ox or a horse. And it's somewhat important to realize that it's fairly easy to make iron tools. It's not so easy to put a horseshoe on an ox safely. Two jobs. Very important. Trip would have had the bug. The tools here now again just if you look closely to the right there's a very large collection of wrought iron tools. And actually I was reminded by one of my friends and supervisors here how we got all of this. I would suspect at least you might know what Sunset Magazine was. There was a famous magazine called Sunset that was for about 40 or 50 years the way the people that came to California from wherever they would learn the lifestyle and the furniture and outdoor dining and all those things. The Lane family who were the owners of Sunset they had a famous exhibition house in Palo Alto where they would demonstrate all these wonderful things. And the backstory I was reminded is that these original tools come from a working ranch in Santa Cruz County that was a ranch bought by the Lane family. And the Lane family didn't need the blacksmith shop they were going to use the building for something else. And they put all the tools in storage and they said to us hey do you want this we're going to make the donation. And way longer ago before my time somebody on the board said yes but they put it in storage. Years later they built this building which to be honest this is the newest building here on the property. The rest of what is behind the original structure is 1854 but this is 1970-1980. Thank you for watching another episode of Silicon Valley Fun Road. We're here to get a sense of what life was in the 1860s in Northern California. How people lived how they survived and enjoyed life over 150 years ago. If you enjoyed this episode please leave us a message comments or what you like about it and we'll see you next time. Thank you for watching.