1891] Santa Clara Valley 



To keep thee bright and joyous 



As all her roses be; 

 May her sweet influence cover 



The hours 'twixt thee and me. 



The Santa Clara Valley, averaging about six 

 miles in width, extends southward fifty miles and 

 more from near the head of San Francisco Bay. 

 Bounding it on the southwest rises an irregular sierra 

 series of Coast Range ridges, known collectively as 

 the Sierra de la Santa Cruz, 



A misty camp of mountains pitched tumultuously. 



Immediately behind the university estate, and 

 forming its higher background, is the wooded Sierra 

 Morena, 1300 feet high, its cloak of redwood, oak, 

 and madrono diversified by thickets of chemisal. 1 

 Farther south this merges into the domelike height 

 of Monte Bello, 2400 feet, the east face of which is 

 locally known as Black Mountain. Still farther to 

 the southward, beyond Los Gatos Creek, appear a 

 number of other wooded knobs, Loma Prieta, the 

 dominating one, "looming" in gracious beauty 3800 

 feet high above the valley. 



On the east, opposing the green ridges of the Holy sierra 

 Cross, stretches the innermost or landward bulwark *** 

 of the Coast Range the long, relatively barren, Diablo 

 and treeless Sierra del Monte Diablo. Mount 



1 Properly "the place of chemiso" Adenostoma fasciculatum a brushy, 

 rosaceous plant which covers large tracts of barren hillsides of moderate height. 

 Chaparral, a parallel and more common term originally given to the dwarf 

 live oak of Spain, means "the place of chaparra" or brush in general. Both 

 chemisal and chaparral are almost impenetrable except to the bobcat, cotton- 

 tail, and road runner. The latter Geococcyx is a species of cuckoo with 

 a very long, thin body, long tail, and longer legs, which seldom flies but runs 

 over the ground with amazing speed, and is, all told, the most fantastically 

 delightful feature of California ornithology. 



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