Although the incorporated City of Saratoga dates back only to 1956, the town had its beginning more than a century earlier when William Campbell built a sawmill in 1848, about 2 1/2 miles above the present village, along what is now Highway 9. The area's earliest inhabitants had been Indians, building homes near the mouth of the canyon at what an early map noted as Campbell's Gap.
In 1850-51, Martin McCarty, who had leased the sawmill, built a toll road connecting it to the village, to expedite the hauling of lumber. The site of this barrier, which gave the town its first widely used name--Toll Gate--is marked by a plaque at Third Street and Big Basin Way. McCarty also had a survey made, laying out the town of McCartysville, which got a post office under that name in 1855.
The town's brief industrial heyday--a short-lived furniture factory, grist mill, tannery, paper and pasteboard mills--was commemorated in the post office name of Bank Mills in 1863. But the discovery of mineral springs with a content similar to that of Congress Spring at Saratoga Springs, New York, led the renaming of the town to Saratoga in 1865. Pacific Congress Springs inspired the construction of an elaborate resort hotel, which flourished for almost forty years about two miles above the village, until it was destroyed by fire in 1903.
The resort image lingered through succeeding years, even as agriculture became the dominant industry in Saratoga and the Santa Clara Valley. Vineyards and a few scattered orchards remain as a reminder of this era, which was brought to a close with the valley's rapid urbanization following World War II.
Today, the City of Saratoga strives to maintain the elements of its natural beauty and colorful past through careful zoning policies and historic preservation.
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