USGS 50 Years in Menlo Park

A Senator's Personal Kingdom

Senator Milton Slocum Latham (born in Ohio) spent much of his accumulated fortune (from his career as a teacher, lawyer, court clerk recorder, district attorney, governor, senator, and bank manager) and built a 50 room mansion on the Middle Road farmland formerly owned by W.E, Barron (most recent owner of the New Almaden mercury mine in San Jose). The Lathams added barns, a blacksmith shop, springhouse, staff cottages, stables, a gashouse and a carriage house. The Lathams lived here from 1871-1883 and raised thoroughbred horses, cattle, dogs, and fowl. Following his death (and some suggest due to his wife's extravagant spending) the estate had to be sold off. It was purchased by the widow of Mark Hopkins through an intermediary named Ariel Lathrop. Widow Hopkins then gave it to her adopted son as a wedding present.

[An interesting aside regarding the Latham legacy and USGS: Around 1973 a circular depression 15 feet in diameter and 5 inches deep developed in one of the parking lots behind USGS Building 3. A contractor was hired to stabilize the depression and fix the pavement. His backhoe excavated the depression to a depth of about 12 feet (the limit to which the backhoe could dig) but did not reach the bottom of the feature which was apparently an abandoned cistern near Latham's carriage house. Stuff which was dumped into the cistern included red brick, 1 inch iron and 5 inch cast iron pipe, copper wire, copper sheeting, broken window panes, bottles, jars, ceramic bowls and dishes, shoes, enamel coated tin kitchenware, pieces of sawed bones, eating utensils, farm implements (shovels, spade, horseshoes, and horse bit), assorted bottles (whiskey, beer, soda, patent medicine, perfume, hair tonic) and jars (canning, mucilage, ointment, marmalade). The stuff came from American, European, and Chinese sources, and items covered a historic period ranging from 1880 to 1932. The cistern was used early on by the Latham family, but it became obsolete after the Senator had a modem 30-foot diameter, 60-foot high gravity-feed water tower built in 1875. Numerous Chinese artifacts found in the abandoned hole apparently reflect the presence of oriental domestic help in the Latham mansion, (Unfortunately to present and future archaeologists, there is no record, other than a Topo West article about the find, that anyone systematically mapped or inventoried the artifacts, items were taken as souvenirs by contractor and USGS staff, and the knowledgeable USGS old-timers are gone and present USGS staffers don't seem to remember where this depression actually was--it is even feared that a newly-built rock crushing lab might have been put over it. Alas!)]

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