Pleasanton, California History

Standing in Pleasanton’s modern downtown, you’ll likely feel very safe, and justly so. If it had been just over 100 years ago, however, you’d have had good reason to have a tingle going up and down your spine. This city was not always the relaxed, affluent center of business and industry that it is today. In fact, it was once a downright deadly place to be if you weren’t the sort of person who would do anything to get what you wanted, or if you weren’t dangerous enough in your own right to deal with those who were.

In the late 1800s, Pleasanton earned the sobriquet “The Most Desperate Town in the West”. To understand just how much this said about the community, consider that the term implies that Pleasanton was a more dangerous place than Tombstone, Dodge City, Deadwood or any of the other legendary, rough and tumble frontier towns. The people who made their way through this city included some of the most famous criminals from both sides of the US Mexican border. The man after whom the story of Zorro was crafted, Joaquin Murrieta, contrary to his literary imitation, terrorized the common man, boosting gold from prospectors attracted to the region to stake their claims.

The city retained this reputation for most of the 1800s. During this time, if you were standing on that same street downtown for long enough, you’d likely see a shoot-out go down. This city was not for amateurs and not for softies. However, times change, and the frontier era did eventually pass. During the early 20th Century, Hollywood made occasional use of the city for a set, due to its wealth of historic architecture. The Hearst family also owned extensive property in the area, which is now part of the Castlewood Country Club.

As the 20th Century progressed, the fortunes of the Bay Area ceased to be so dependent upon booms and busts—though those of the past, perhaps, foreshadowed the Internet boom and bust of the 1990s—and became a collection of stable, interdependent cities. Pleasanton grew up with its neighbors, and soon the city was home to normal people, raising families and making their way to work and back every day. The nature of that work, and the advent of Pleasanton as an entirely different type of city than it had been, could not have been predicted in the frontier past.

Pleasanton, along with other cities in the area, soon became renowned for the amount of high-tech development and entrepreneurship that began to characterize them. Major companies moved into the city, and the Hacienda Business Park soon became the location of some of the most dynamic, high-tech and successful businesses in the world. Of course, this made the city attractive to educated professionals, a trend that continues today. This city is now the wealthiest mid-sized city in the US. No one would ever guess, dining at a restaurant in the fashionable downtown, how wild a place it once was.