This spot is fairly close to where the railroad tracks used to
come by, and where the train used to stop, near Saratoga Avenue.
You will see the name Champagne Fountain on topo maps, but Congress
Junction is the name that has the most history here. The current
tracks were moved when Highway 85 was built to avoid crossing and
re-crossing the freeway, so now they are on the other side of the
freeway from the cache site.
Passenger train service lasted here from 1908 to January 1964.
Some of my neighbors remember when they could board the train at
Congress Junction for a trip to San Francisco. They got on train
No. 129, which left at 6:49 am, arriving in San Francisco a little
over an hour and a half later.
The tracks currently dead-end at the Permanente plant, but they
used to continue northward from Monte Vista along the route of the
present Foothill Expressway. The railroad was credited with
bringing about the development of Los Altos. The tracks skirted the
edge of the Stanford University campus and joined the main Southern
Pacific line at California Avenue in Palo Alto.
The branch line serving Saratoga was variously known as the
Mayfield (as in south Palo Alto) or Vasona cutoff, and left the
main line at Vasona. That main line was the one that had originated
in Santa Cruz, went through the mountains to Los Gatos, and on to
San Jose. Steam power, which gave the railroad a lot of its
glamour, ended in January 1957 when diesel locomotives took
over.
Paul Masson’s champagne cellars and tasting room used to be on
the other side of the cache from the tracks. It was the source of
the Champagne Fountain designation that replaced the Congress
Junction name in its final years. The champagne cellars closed down
and were demolished within my time in Saratoga. In its place are 94
large homes on small lots. The developer designed this small park
and a narrow linear park around the entire subdivision to
compensate for the smaller lots and narrow street.
Reference: Willys Peck's column in the Saratoga News, November
29, 2006.
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