If time travel were possible and you were zapped back more than a hundred years into the past in the Santa Clara Valley, chances are you may be on a train rolling into a commuter stop called Los Altos Depot. As your train barrels into the station, you may spot young men on bicycles going to work at a nearby fruit cannery, their lunch packs dangling from the handlebar. Just a 10 minute walk eastward from the station you’ll spot a Craftsman style house nestled in the middle of a sprawling apricot farm, designed and constructed by a carpenter called J. Gilbert Smith.

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In 1901, when he was 25 years old, Smith bought five acres along the unpaved two-lane Giffin Road, “a little dirt lane” that snaked all the way from El Camino Real up to La Honda. Now called San Antonio Road, i

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