San Jose’s Almaden Valley offers a great deal of scenic beauty, much of it enjoyable on foot or by bicycle. The Alamitos Creek Trail also includes a hint of the region’s past. Recently I took some photos of the Pfeiffer Stone House, a storage shed for the Goodrich’s Free Stone Quarry that was built around 1875.
You’ll find this curious bit of history at the corner of Graystone Lane and Pfeiffer Ranch Road, along the Alamitos Creek Trail.
View Pfeiffer Stone House in a larger map
This is water district land and the stone hut sits behind a chain link fence together with a plaque put up by the Mountain Charlie Chapter of E Clampus Vitus.
The creek is to the right of this photo, and the Graystone area is off to the left. (To see a few more photos, please click on the link below.)
The plaque is unfortunately a little hard to read with the chain link fence, but it explains the purpose of the stone house as being storage of food and tools for the Goodrich Quarry.
I could get all of it in one shot, unfortunately.
The plaque states that the Goodrich Quarry provided the brownstone used for the Hall of Justice, Post Office, St. Mary’s Church original buildings (I believe it means the original Jesuit mission in Los Gatos – the current St. Mary’s building in Los Gatos is a block or so away from that first site), buildings of Stanford University & the Carson City Mine.
