Lexington Reservoir - Santa Clara County, California

Visited on 3/29/2019 while on a weekend camping trip adventure to the South Bay Area, we camped at Coyote Lake near Gilroy.  Jeff and our two Chocolate Labs, Summer and Skye joined us on our adventure of several lakes in the area.  Located along the canyon on Highway 17 southwest of the town of Los Gatos is the 450 acre Lexington Reservoir.  The reservoir and James J. Lenihan Dam are located at an elevation of 645 feet above sea level.  Jeff and I walked across the dam with our dogs.  The dam was constructed in 1952. Initially, the dam was referred to by different names, primarily "Windy Point Dam," because the location of the proposed dam was near an obscure spur known as Windy Point. In 1947, water district directors decided to name the dam and reservoir for Lexington, a small nearby community that was sacrificed when the reservoir was built. In 1996, Lexington Dam was renamed for James J. Lenihan, the Santa Clara Valley Water District's longest-serving director with 37 years of service.

The 2.5-miles-long reservoir is the second-largest water district reservoir.   In 1943, because of the rapid expansion of orchards in the county, the Santa Clara Valley Water District determined that the well water in the Santa Clara Valley was being diminished rapidly and a dam was needed on Los Gatos Creek, with one goal being to percolate the water into the ground and ultimately increase the amount of well water available.  After rerouting State Route 17 near Windy Point, which is a mile south of Los Gatos, the District began dam construction in the spring of 1952, completing it that fall.

The reservoir covered the towns of Lexington and Alma. Alma and Lexington reached their peak population in the mid-19th century, when about 200 people lived in each. Each of the towns had a post office, hotel, saloons, blacksmith shops, and half a dozen redwood sawmills. Lexington was the halfway stop for stagecoaches running between San Jose and Santa Cruz. The town served as a place to switch from four horses to six horses to get over the mountains. Lexington declined after 1880 when the narrow gauge railroad from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz bypassed it, while Alma declined when Highway 17 bypassed it in 1940. The railroad ceased operations in 1940. By 1950, only about 100 people lived in the two communities.

Lexington gained national attention in 1883, when a Los Gatos saloon keeper, Lloyd Majors, hired two thugs to rob an elderly Lexington man who kept $20,000 in gold in his cabin. They burned him with turpentine-soaked rags and beat him with pistols, killing him, and then fled with the gold. Their sensational trial in San Jose drew national attention similar to that accorded to the Lizzie Borden ax murders nine years later. Majors and one of the thugs were hanged. The other spent 15 years in prison.