A DETAIL often overlooked: the San Jose Diridon Station, a.k.a. the Caltrain Station, formerly known as the Cahill Station, is already the second-busiest train station in California, after Los Angeles.
Restored and renamed in 1994 after local politician Rod Diridon Sr., the station is also on the National Register of Historic Places because of its historical and architectural significance. With the array of major transportation systems currently utilizing the facility and even more planned for the future, old man Diridon himself came up with a killer idea to house some exhibit space in the station from now on. Until last summer, he presided over the Rotary Club, so they funded the project.
History San José then created “The Way to San Jose: The Rotary Celebrates Transportation History,” an exhibit of historical artifacts, photos, notes, collector’s items and other memorabilia—all related to various forms of transportation and their histories in Santa Clara County. Displays are dedicated to train travel, air travel, trolley travel and more. Some of the artifacts are more than 100 years old.
It all looks quite hokey and simple at first, but hey, 70 years ago, San Jose was a hokey and simple place. That’s the beauty of the show, especially when one eyes the circa 1936 photograph of an airfield on King Road. City officials described it as “a mud-hole along a cow pasture.”
The exhibit isn’t huge—just a half-dozen glass cases—but at least it’s something to look at in a traditionally bleak lobby area, especially now that Caltrain no longer staffs ticket agents at the counters.
Over in the corner by the abandoned ticket window, one finds sparse displays dedicated to travel by ship, horse, mule and oxen. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers map from decades ago shows the “Proposed Port of San Jose,” a.k.a. Alviso. We also see letterhead from the San Jose Deep Water Port Association, circa 1930.
A ship’s pressure gauge from 1945 sits in the next case. The gauge used to hang on the wall at Lou’s Village, the celebrated San Jose restaurant where the old San Jose Earthquakes teams in the ’70s held many of their after-game parties.
There’s more where that came from: A photo of a steamboat pulling up at the Alviso Slough in 1900. A map of transcontinental stage lines in 1858. Shots of the New Almaden Stage Line. A winnowing basket form 1890. A painting of an Ohlone tribe in a canoe. A map of tribal areas in California. A shovel from the 1990 groundbreaking of the Tamian Station.
The other cases offer material a little more humorous. The “Travel by Air” case features an ancient poster dated May 6, 1940, when the taxpayers were first asked to vote for the new airport. In block letters, it proclaims, “Vote yes on the San Jose Municipal Airport. Take San Jose Out of the Horse and Buggy Class!”
Everyone will crack up at a 1985 photograph of then–Mayor Tom McEnery cutting the ribbon for San Jose’s first-ever international flight, a milestone, an unprecedented AirCal route that went all the way to—drum roll, please—Vancouver, British Columbia. Now, 25 years later, one can’t actually fly to Canada from San Jose anymore. McEnery was just too far ahead of his time.
Against the western wall, one finds a case titled “Travel by Rail.” Here we learn that the San Francisco to San Jose commuter line is the oldest continuously operating line west of the Mississippi. The “Travel by Rail Transit” case provides even more insight. We see handwritten notes taken by the elder Rod Diridon and Peter Giles, back in 1980. They appear to be brainstorming potential light-rail routes other than the ones that eventually materialized.
Finally, the last case presents the past, present and future of the Diridon Station, complete with archival photos and an artist rendering of what high-speed rail might look like. Cahill himself would have been proud.
Unfortunately, the exhibit just had to be named “The Way to San Jose,” forever reminding us of that embarrassing Dionne Warwick abomination that we’ll just never get rid of. On a humorous note, because of that song, the simple folks actually accused her of putting San Jose on the map and overpopulating it. They didn’t want San Jose to grow up. I guess that’s what high-speed rail is for.
‘The Way to San Jose’
Diridon Station
