Isaiah West Taber (18301912) left his home in New Bedford, Mass., at the age of 15 and went to work on a whaling ship, according to his biographers. He migrated to California in 1850 and spent four years at the mines, hoping to make a fortune in gold.
The level of his success in that endeavor is unknown, but he was able to return to his hometown, study dentistry and open a practice. His life’s work, however, was not to be in the dental field. He became interested in photography, returned to California, and is now acknowledged as one of early California’s outstanding photographers. Today’s circa 1880s Taber photograph illustrates how strongly agricultural the Los Gatos area was at that time. In fact, exceptional fruit crops created a boom time in the Santa Clara Valley in 1887.
Families would often hire professional photographers to preserve images of their homes and landscapes, and to show life as it really was in the clear and intense light of California. Not unlike painters of the same era, the photographers left their studios to capture natural, outdoor scenes en plein air. Taber, operating out of San Francisco, amassed an inventory of negatives of more than 30,000 scenic views from the cameras of many remarkable early photographers. Stunning views, such as this one of Los Gatos, were very work-intensive to create.
Taber probably traveled to Los Gatos and the site of this photograph using a combination of ferryboat, railroad and horse and buggy, all the while lugging heavy equipment. Tragically, the 1906 earthquake destroyed the majority of Taber’s negatives and ended his career.
Peggy Conaway is the director of the Los Gatos Public Library and is the founder of the History Project, a joint venture between the library and the Los Gatos History Museum. Do you have historical photographs of Los Gatos that you would like to share with the community? Contact Conaway at pconaway@losgatosca.gov.
