Centerville, Fremont (Images of America)

I am very pleased I bought this book since I grew up in Fremont and passed through Centerville hundreds of times. The main reason I wanted this book is, of course, I assumedthat about a quarter of it would be devoted to my two alma maters, Centerville Junior High School and Washington High School. My guess was partly correct, since most of thebook was devoted to the agricultural, educational, sports, recreational, religious, and transportation history of this town which in 1956 joined with four other unincorporatedcommunities to form the present city of Fremont. The book offers a few surprises as well as facts I am familiar with. For example, I did not know that my high school was informally nicknamed, "Centerville High School", before it moved to its current location on the corner of Fremont Boulevard and Eggers Drive in 1924.Most of the photographs in the book pretty much tell a very engaging and lively history of this interesting community.The two authors know their material well since both work at Fremont's Museum of Local History in the Mission San Jose district and also coathored both the Niles and Irvington books published by Arcadia. Holmes is probably the pioneer expert on Fremont's education history, since as a retired elementary school principal he wrote a book about the history of the Fremont Unified School District and was interviewed 1991 when the Fremont Argus newspaper did an article about the centennial of Washington High School. He has also writien a few historical columns for the Argus.

This book is an interesting book on the history of the Centerville part of Fremont. Here is some of the interesting information that this book mentions: Lt. Col. John Charles Fremont and his CA Battalion never visited Centerville. The book describes from 1850 on the history of the Centerville town site. Target opened at the Fremont Hub Shopping Center on Sept. 13, 2002 in the remodeled Montgomery Ward space. Lyon’s of CA was founded in Sacramento in 1952 as a chain of diner-style restaurants. The time of Lyon’s bankruptcy was in 1998. The KGO-810 radio transmission towers were out on the Fremont Baylands. In October 1989, the Loma Prieta Earthquake impacted the KGO radio transmission towers built on bay mud in a salt evaporation pond, causing the conical wire-towers to flop over in the middle. Morris Hyman, a Stanford graduate, was one of the founders of Fremont Bank on Sept. 3, 1964. Fremont Bank pioneered Saturday banking in the country in 1967. The street by the name of Grimmer was named after Elmo “Chuck” Grimmer. Stevenson Blvd. in Fremont was named after the Stevenson Family. John Thomas Stevenson came to the area in 1852. John L. Stevenson was the first mayor of Fremont in 1956.