A Little Bottle from the Big ‘Farm’

By Paul Ackerman

Idug this nice half-pint milk bottle a few years back in the creek which runs through the Stanford (California) University Golf Course. It had a light tint of amethyst when I found it, so I put it on our patio roof to see if it would turn a deeper shade. It did.

I had read where Amasa Leland Stanford, 1824-93, a prominent Sacramento grocer, early governor of California, an eight-year U.S. senator, and one-time president of the Central Pacific Railroad, had purchased the Palo Alto Stock Farm in 1876. Over the next decade the farm increased in size to more than 8,000 acres.

In 1885, Leland Stanford founded Stanford University in honor of his son, Leland Jr., who died in 1884 of typhoid fever at the age of 15. (FYI: Leland Junior’s amusements included a toy train that ran on 400 feet of track near the Stanfords’ Palo Alto home, and a collection of Venetian glass animals.)

Stanford University was opened in 1891. Leland Stanford was a real horse enthusiast who attracted many people of the same inclination to his farm. Note: To this day Stanford University still is nicknamed “the Farm.”

One of the most notable people attracted to Stanford’s farm was Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), an English-American photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion picture projection. He was interested in photographing a horse while in motion, hoping to capture proof that at a particular point of galloping a horse has all four feet off the ground at once.

He was successful in proving this when he developed a sequence of photos, one of which shows all four feet of the horse off the ground at the same time. This series of photographs, made in 1878 on the grounds of Palo Alto Stock Farm, proved to be the first motion picture ever made. The Palo Alto Stock Farm name disappeared in 1903 when it was fully incorporated into Stanford University. Such is the history behind the name on this pretty little purple bottle.

FYI: The Central Pacific’s first locomotive, named “Gov. Stanford” in his honor, is on display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. Leland Stanford owned two wineries — the Leland Stanford Winery founded in 1869, and run by his brother Josiah; and the 55,000 acre Great Vina Ranch in Tehama County, containing what was then the largest vineyard in the world at 3,575 acres and given to Stanford University.

TOP: The Palo Alto Stock Farm in the 1880s. BOTTOM: A Palo Alto milk bottle in sun-colored amethyst.