Call It Highway 9

I grew up in Cupertino, California, living there from 1962 to 1978.  My father still lives there, and my mom did until she died.

Cupertino was named for a creek, discovered by the De Anza party of 1776 and named "Arroyo de San Jose de Copertino" for the patron saint of the day it was discovered, Saint Joseph of Copertino.  The first American settler in Cupertino after it was won in the Mexican American war of 1846-8 was Elisha Stephens, who settled on the banks of the same creek.  Not realizing it already had a name, other settlers named it for him. It's not known how Stephens became Stevens, but it did.  The Spanish mission in Santa Clara had a tiny chapel on the creek, which as population grew became inadequate, and a new church, again named for Joseph of Copertino, was built a little over a mile away, near the intersection of what was then called Mountain View-Saratoga road and Stevens Creek Road.  Both were dirt.  Not long later, a small general store was built right at the intersection and named "The Cupertino Store".  The picture below was taken while they were paving Mt View-Saratoga for the very first time in 1915.  You can see the rails of the electric trolley that ran on Stevens Creek Road between 1907 and 1934.  The camera here is looking due north.  The house I grew up in is about half a mile northeast of this scene--and was built 46 years later...  Saint Josephs church is invisible behind the haze from the steam roller.

Some time in the first half of the 20th century, the Mt View-Saratoga road became part of the state highway system and was called Highway 9. It no longer ran all the way to Mountain View, but stopped in Sunnyvale.  But it was expanded up over the Santa Cruz mountains past Saratoga, through Saratoga gap, Boulder Creek, Felton and eventually to Santa Cruz.

When I moved to Cupertino in 1962, everybody called it "Highway 9".  We knew it was also called "Saratoga Sunnyvale Road" but nobody called it that. There was a Highway 9 Auto Parts about half a mile north of this scene on the west side of the road (Apple Computer's current headquarters is across the street from that site).  There were several other businesses with Highway 9 in their name.

In the mid '60s, a new freeway opened, called I-280.  Initially, it connected Highway 9 and State highway 17.  But it soon was expanded, going a little west, and then swinging north to connect to connect to US 101 in Mountain View.  The northern swing was called Highway 85.  It was planned for 85 to eventually connect to Los Gatos and eventually Blossom Hill, but that didn't happen until the 1980s (280 was connected to SF in 1972).   But for some reason they decided that they needed to rename the Saratoga Sunnyvale road Highway 85.  Highway 9 over the mountains continued to be called that, but once it got into Saratoga, it took a sharp right and went instead to Los Gatos.

So from about 1970 to 1985, there were two highway 85s in Cupertino: the short bit of the freeway that had been built, and the Saratoga to Cupertino part of what had been Highway 9.  The part from Cupertino to Sunnyvale was called the Sunnyvale-Saratoga road.  Once 85 was finished, the Saratoga end was called the Saratoga Sunnyvale road, and 85 was moved to the freeway.   Cupertino, in the middle, was torn, not wanting to offend their neighbors, and really, being unhappy calling it anything but Highway 9.  They hemmed and hawed for a long time, before settling on De Anza Blvd. 

I say, screw the state highway system.  Call it Highway 9.  The other road was the Saratoga Los Gatos road before, and it still is labeled that on most maps.  There's no good reason not to go back.  Anybody who lived in Cupertino prior to 1980 calls it Highway 9 anyway, and a lot of people who came later do too.