Diablo Valley College History 155, covering Local History, has brought back memories of when I was a child of about nine years old. Our family, who lived in Pt. Richmond, Contra Costa County-which also is the city where I was born in 1908–became the proud owners of a new Dort automobile in 1917. It was then that we were able to travel to Lafayette to visit my Uncle Joe and Aunt Alice Hunt whom I had never met until then.
Driving from Berkeley up the winding, narrow, curvy road to the Old Tunnel was a beautiful drive but also very slow as we had to drive mostly in second and low gear all the way to the tunnel which was dark, narrow and scary in driving through it. Driving in low gear for a long length of time up the steep Old Tunnel Road on a Sunday when traffic was heavy and everyone, it seemed, was taking their Sunday drive out into the country would cause the car to overheat. To avoid this, and also for a change of scenery, we would use other roads, some were a very round-a-bout way of getting to Lafayette. One road we often used went through what is now El Sobrante and was a dirt road in the same area where the San Pablo Dam Road is now except there wasn’t any dam at that time and the road was on the opposite side of the dam. This road brought us into Orinda crossroads.
Orinda then consisted of one restaurant named the Willows. Since there was a creek with a bridge over it and many willow trees in the creek, it was a very appropriate name for the restaurant.
Lafayette was a very small horse and buggy town, consisting of a hotel at the corner of Tunnel Road and Moraga Road, a post office, a butcher shop, the Wayside Inn, a grocery store, a blacksmith shop, an ice cream/hot dog stand (my aunt’s), a hardware store, a service station, a barber shop, a rickety little post office, a couple of frame school houses, a town hall that was completed in 1914, a little church on a hillside (which was demolished in the 1930’s to make way for a new hi-way being built and later named Mt. Diablo Blvd.) In 1919 a Model T truck was added to the volunteer fire department.
My Uncle Joe Hunt used to work on some of the farms in the area when they first moved to Lafayette, but he developed a crippling arthritis in his back from a back injury he had received in his younger days. He had fallen from the top of a hay wagon while working on a farm located at the end of Lake Merritt on Park Blvd., Oakland. He was no longer able to do the heavy work required on farms so they started a little roadside business. It was an ice cream and hot dog stand in the center of town on Tunnel Road. It was right across from the Lafayette Park and the hotel which were situated on the corners of Moraga Road and Tunnel Road. The Post Office was on one side of their stand and the towns blacksmith shop was on the other side. They sold ice cream, hot dogs, soda pop, peanuts, candy, cigarettes, coffee and beer. My aunt and uncle Hunt rented the small home located in the rear of the property. The home belonged to Peter Thomson, the town blacksmith. There was also a small creek on the property directly behind the stand which was dry during the summer. There was a nice little picnic area in the creek where two of my second cousins and I used to play and have a picnic lunch. This creek is now the entrance road into the Lafayette Shopping Center from Mt. Diablo Blvd.
Sundays were an extremely busy day for my Aunt Alice as people in those days would have an early Sunday dinner at home before venturing on their ride out into the country. This usually took them to Alamo, Danville or in the Concord direction. On the way home they would stop at Lafayette at my aunt’s stand (which was also know as “Mother’s Place”) for an evening snack of hot dogs, soda, coffee, etc.
Unless there was a specific reason for us to have to return home early in the evening on a Sunday, we always remained in Lafayette until the traffic thinned out to avoid the extremely slow bumper to bumper traffic over the hill all the way to Berkeley. I must mention that a short way past Orinda, going up the grade, there was a large turnoff along the hi-way where one could stop at a watering hole (a pipe extending from a spring in the hillside) and fill their radiator before the big climb. This was a very busy spot on hot summer days.
I sometimes stayed with my aunt in Lafayette in the summer and occasionally I rode in their small horse drawn wagon with my uncle to the railroad station on Moraga Blvd. to pick up supplies sent out from Oakland. Moraga Blvd. was one of the few streets that was paved and had sidewalks which were lined with palm trees all the way to the railroad station. Beyond the station was a large pear orchard and on the other side of the station was dairy land (this is where I now live and is known as Lafayette Oaks and was one of the first subdivisions built in Lafayette in 1941). The dairy was located at the other end of the property off Reliez Station Road.
For recreation, there were dances given in the various Town Halls. This was always a big event and was attended by all the neighboring farmers from far and near. Each town that had a hall took turns in giving the dances. My aunt and uncle Hunt maintained a booth at the dance halls where they sold cold drinks, ice cream, candy and cigarettes. Each month that the dance was held, they loaded up their wagon and headed for the town. This sometimes required hours of travel to and from the hall with a loaded down wagon.
My two second cousins, with whom I sometimes stayed with for a few days or a week, lived on a small farm near Geary Road on Pleasant Hill Road. Every evening, a pack of coyotes would come down from the hills to the edge of the property and howl. This was always a very scary, eerie experience for me. I believe the chickens, which were well fenced in, were the big attraction. They would sometimes come down very close and so I was always afraid that they would come to the house and attack us.
When the Tunnel Road was widened in 1920 my aunt and uncle had to give up their little road stand. They then bought a piece of property at the corner of Mt. Diablo Blvd. and Hough Avenue and built a new building. It contained an inside counter, and tables for serving food which included light lunches and dinners. Later, after my uncle Joe died, my aunt Alice leased the corner of her property to an oil company. Her building was moved around the corner facing Hough Avenue and a service station was built on the corner.
Hough Avenue has since been renamed Lafayette Circle. The building still remains at 20 Lafayette Circle on the same site and is listed as one of the oldest buildings in Lafayette. It is now occupied by the Nifty Thrifty Shop of Futures Explored.
The photograph shows how the building looked in the 1920’s. On the left is my aunt Alice Hunt. On the right is Mr. Fred Bennett who built the short order restaurant. The children are not identified.
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