Almaden Valley History: Pierce Ranch Neighborhood
The Pierce Ranch neighborhood in Almaden Valley is flanked by Camden Avenue to its north, McAbee Road to its east, and the verdant green expanse of the Almaden Quicksilver County Park to its south. It developed into a beautiful residential neighborhood in the mid 1970s.
Like much of Almaden, the Pierce Ranch neighborhood has an interesting history dating back to the 1930s. Back then, the land – about 250 acres of it – belonged to Dr. Mark Hopkins, a San Jose based physician. Hopkins, a hunting and riding enthusiast, used his country estate as a base for his hunting trips and a home for his horses.
Tony Pierce, the person after whom the neighborhood came to be named, was a young farmer and a patient of Dr. Hopkins. Pierce and his wife, Mary, saw in the land a potential for dairy farming. They acquired the land, and in 1947, began a dairy farm. They developed a commercial herd, which grew to about 600 cattle heads at the peak of the operations, added barns, homes for themselves and their dairy workers on the land.
The Pierce Ranch dairy operations flourished till 1974. By then, the demand for residential land grew in San Jose and the Pierce Ranch’s land was subdivided and sold for housing development.
For more information, listen to Joe and Teresa Pierce talk about the history of Pierce Ridge and visit http://onlineexhibits.historysanjose.org/neighborhoods/pierce/index.html
From the Fun File: KQED QUEST aired a television piece entitled 
Learn about the history of the fascinating Almaden Air Force Station Atop Mount Umunhum. See actual key artifacts from the site, and enjoy a slide show of amazing historic photos of the radar station when it was in operation during the Cold War between 1958 and 1980.
