In 1886, the area from Searsville to Crystal Springs, in San Mateo County, was christened the “Portolá-Crespi Valley” by a local newspaper editor and landowner (partly after Father Juan Crespi who accompanied Portola on his expedition into the Peninsula). Locals later corrupted the name to “Portola Valley.”

The settlement of Portola itself sprung up on a tract bought in 1883 by the creator of San Francisco’s cable cars, Andrew S. Hallidie, who later improved access to his property by constructing an aerial cable car which ran up and down the mountainside on his land.

Here in Portola Valley, between San Francisquito and Los Trancos creeks, there was once a tract of land called Rancho Cañada del Corte de Madera (canyon of the timber choppings, named after the redwoods here which were chopped down and used early on by Mission Santa Clara and the Pueblo of San Jose). On this nearly 23,000 acre parcel was a mining property with two vertical shafts, 75 and 200 feet deep.

In recent times, only Stanford University mining students have been allowed to explore the property’s subterranean mysteries, when the land became part of Stanford’s Jasper Ridge biological preserve. But the workings, known as Hermit Mine, were named for Domenico Grosso, the hermit of Portola Valley.

Grosso’s background is obscure. What is known is that he came from Genoa, Italy, to San Francisco in about 1869. He told friends that he had fought under famed Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi (who led the Risorgimento, the successful 19th-century independence movement against European forces then occupying Italy).

After some unsuccessful ventures in the City, he moved to the Portola Valley area and entered the service of rancher Nicholas Larco, serving as cook, then as ranch foreman. Grosso discovered silver on a ranch southeast of Searsville and convinced Larco to purchase the mineral rights from the owner, lumberman and farmer Dennis Martin. (Martin came to California in 1844 with the Murphy-Townsend-Stevens party, the first emigrant group to cross the Sierra with wagons. The next year Martin earned a hero’s reputation by retracing his trail into the Sierra to rescue fellow pioneer Moses Schallenberger, who had remained behind to protect a stockpile of invaluable provisions.) But when Larco went bust through mining, ranching, and mulberry tree growing for the culture of silkworms, the rights fell to Grosso, whose master plan began to unfold.

Salvaging lumber from miners’ bunkhouses, he built a dwelling, barn, and shop in a nearby canyon. Then came his plantings -- fruit trees, grapevines, and roses soon grew up around his home. Grosso dug hillside terraces and a decorative trout pool, into which spring waters lightly splashed over carefully arranged serpentine rocks. The Eden-like result he christened “The Palace Hotel.”

Grosso, though a recluse, did entertain the odd visitor. He celebrated guests at his Palace Hotel by raising the Italian and American flags and serving wine and small bread cakes. His conversation was amiable, but Grosso sometimes referred wistfully and cryptically to someone named Julia. He never revealed exactly who she was or when and where he had known her.

Maybe the hermit’s retirement from society and cultivation of his pastoral idyll was an escape from, or an attempt to ease, a broken heart.

Grosso held much faith in his mining prospects, particularly in the deep digging which became known as Portola shaft. But his hopes for the 200-foot hole were squelched when eventually it flooded.

However, Grosso stuck to his belief that riches were yet to be found on his land. After the hermit’s death, 20 or more workings were discovered, all apparently dug by him.

Though he did find one or two rich samples of ore, material wealth was not to be in Grosso’s future. He never made any earnings out of his diggings. Still, he lived on for years in his fanciful hideaway until his passing.

Grosso probably felt at home in the Peninsula’s cheery weather, so similar to his native Mediterranean clime. This, and the graceful live oak savannah landscape in which he lived create the kind of conditions that inspire some to get closer to nature.

And so with that, the tragi-romantic figure of Domenico Grosso recedes back into the folklore of Portola Valley. But who knows what other stories the oak groves, canyons, and grassy hills of the Peninsula yet conceal?

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Eric Bryan is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in print publications in North America and Britain, as well as online.

This article was originally published in The San Francisco Examiner.

Copyright © Eric Bryan