Lexington, California, is a
ghost town in
Santa Clara County, now submerged by the
Lexington Reservoir. Originally located along
Los Gatos Creek, the town was 550 feet above sea level.
Lexington started out as a sawmill built in 1848 by Isaac Branham and Julian Jank. Zachariah "Buffalo" Jones bought the mill for $3000 and laid out a town called "Jones Mill". In 1860 John P. Hennings bought some of the property and changed the name to Lexington, after his home town of
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is a city in Kentucky, United States that is the county seat of Fayette County, Kentucky, Fayette County. By population, it is the List of cities in Kentucky, second-largest city in Kentucky and List of United States cities by popul ...
.
[George Bruntz, ''The History of Los Gatos, Gem of the Foothills'', Fresno: Valley Publishers, 1971, p. 7.]
Lexington was a stop on the
stagecoach
A stagecoach is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by four horses although some versions are draw ...
route from
Los Gatos to
Santa Cruz. In the 1860s, the saw mills moved up into the hills and Lexington began to lose importance.
[ In 1880, a narrow gauge railroad from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz was completed, bypassing Lexington and accelerating its decline; its post office had already been transferred to ]Alma
Alma or ALMA may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Alma'' (film), a 2009 Spanish short animated film
* ''Alma'' (Oswald de Andrade novel), 1922
* ''Alma'' (Le Clézio novel), 2017
* ''Alma'' (play), a 1996 drama by Joshua Sobol about Alma ...
, a mile south, where the trains stopped and which was the transfer point to stagecoaches until the line was completed.
The railroad ceased operations in March 1940, following major damage by a winter storm and the completion of State Route 17 that same year. When the Lexington Reservoir was created in 1952, both Lexington and Alma were officially abandoned and SR 17 was rerouted to its present location. The visible ruins under Lexington Reservoir are actually those of Alma, not Lexington; building foundations and original pavements of roads are sometimes visible during droughts.
The nearby unincorporated town of Lexington Hills
Lexington Hills is a census-designated place and an unincorporated area in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 2,492 at the 2020 census. The area is located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about five miles south of Los ...
is a reminder of the former town; it combines several villages in the Santa Cruz Mountains
The Santa Cruz Mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are a mountain range in central and Northern California, United States. They form a ridge down the San Francisco Peninsula, south of San Francisco. They separate the Pacific Ocean from ...
.
The Lexington Murders was one of the most notable crimes in California during the 19th century. Three men were responsible for the brutal murders of William Peter Renowden and Archibald McIntyre in Lexington, on March 11, 1883.
References
{{Santa Clara County
Ghost towns in the San Francisco Bay Area
Former settlements in Santa Clara County, California