Beneath I-280

You have arrived to this digital space that asks, who once lived in the neighborhood that is now I-280 and SR-87 in San Jose? Here, you will find the following as some attempts to answer: a poem, some history, an immersive map, pages from the archives, images, stories yet to be told. You may scroll continuously to explore some of these answers in a linear way, or you can explore on your own using the navigation bar at the top. This project looks at and was designed and researched upon the unceded land of the Muwekma and Tamyen Ohlone people who are currently seeking federal recognition for their ancestral connection and sovereignty to the land.

Have a safe journey, we hope you learn something along the way.

Las casitas near the gray cannery, nestled amid wild abrazos of climbing roses and man-high red geraniums are gone now. The freeway conceals it all beneath a raised scar.

But under the fake wind sounds of the open lanes, in the abandoned lots below, new grasses sprout, wild mustard remembers, old gardens come back stronger than they were, trees have been left standing in their yards. Albaricoqueros, cerezos, nogales . . . Viejitas come here with paper bags to gather greens. Espinaca, verdolagas, yerbabuena . . .

I scramble over the wire fence that would have kept me out. Once, I wanted out, wanted the rigid lanes to take me to a place without sun, without the smell of tomatoes burning on swing shift in the greasy summer air.

Maybe it's here en los campos extraños de esta ciudad where I'll find it, that part of me mown under like a corpse or a loose seed.

From Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Copyright © 1981 Lorna Dee Cervantes.

For those of us who drive atop I-280, I-680, and SR-87, it can be hard to imagine a San José without these “raised scars” - as San José-raised Chicana poet and activist Lorna Dee Cervantes describes them. Our environments are shaped around the lengths and curves of these highways, its onramps and its offramps, the sound barriers, the layers of exhaust. Concrete feigns permanence. It limits imagination of what else could be there and memory of what has been there before.

And these bloated roads haven't always been here. In the 1960s and early 1970s, some of the oldest neighborhoods in San José were demolished to make room for them. These were neighborhoods of working immigrant families who benefitted from living within walking distance of the canneries, factories, and orchards where they worked. These were thriving communities: homes, markets, small businesses, factories, churches, schools, all were demolished. Bringing to light California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) archival documents for the very first time, this website attempts to uncover the neighborhood buried beneath the I-280 and SR-87 interchange. 

Today, when the cost of living in San José is among the highest in the world and countless residents are being displaced further and further from the city, we must learn from moments in history when working-class people of color were dispossessed of opportunities to grow and sustain their livelihoods, neighborhoods, and communities into the future. Further, we must draw connections between the contemporary housing crisis and moments in history that led to it. This project mourns the loss of what was and could have been instead of a freeway. It recalls the countless people in and of San José whose lives were upended and whose roots were buried beneath I-280.

The I-280/SR-87 interchange sits above and around some of the oldest neighborhoods in San José, just southwest of Downtown. The Gardner Neighborhood to the west of the Guadalupe River and the Washington/Guadalupe neighborhood to the east have been home to Mexican, Central and South American, and Italian immigrants since the turn of the twentieth century.

These neighborhoods were in close proximity to a number of local canneries and orchards, and many residents of these neighborhoods worked in the agricultural industry, as well as in construction and service work. 

By the early 1960s, these neighborhoods were home to thriving, intergenerational working-class communities. The neighborhoods themselves were bustling, self-sufficient, and walkable, with nearby shopping centers, schools, churches, public transportation, and related services.

In 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act was passed, financing a dramatic expansion of the interstate freeway system across the US. In cities, freeway expansion was linked to broader "urban renewal" efforts, often unabashedly racist "slum clearance" programs aimed at using the powers of eminent domain to replace low-income communities of color with more desirable uses. San José officials jumped at the opportunity, framing freeway construction as a solution to challenges surrounding the expanding urban population. When construction of the segment of I-280 in West San José began in 1958, the stated goal was to increase access to Central San José and connect downtown San José to the larger San Francisco Bay Area.

In "Guadalupe Freeway: A Proposal for a State Highway," a brief 10-page report submitted in May of 1961, San José City Manager A.P. "Dutch" Hamann argued for the urgent necessity of building I-280 through his city. San José, he wrote, is "destined" to be one of the largest metro areas in California, and freeway expansion essential to accommodating the growing population. Treating his vision as destiny, Hamann used his 20-years as city manager to grow the city's boundaries, population, and infrastructure in as many ways as he could. In this way, the city prioritized its growth over the well-being of existing residents.

In  "The Implications of Freeway Siting in California: Four Case Studies on the Effects of Freeways on Neighborhoods of Color" (2023) , Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and colleagues note that "it does not appear that any alternate routes were considered for the siting of I-280." (Another Story Map that draws on "The Implications of Freeway Siting in California" is  Freeways, Redlining & Racism  by Michael Rosen, which describes impacts in Pasadena.)

Soon after the freeway alignment was planned, the state conducted assessments of each property it needed to acquire so it could proceed with demolition and construction. These assessments make up the contents of the Caltrans Archive. Previously unprocessed, this archive documents the iterative process of destroying a neighborhood. In unearthing this archive, we are attempting to remember the homes, the families, and the neighborhoods that have been lost to time.

The below interactive map provides a visualization of some of the properties that were acquired for the construction of the I-280/SR-87 interchange. Each property is delineated as a polygon, representing the approximate area and boundaries of the acquisition. The map serves as a historical record and provides transparency to stakeholders and the general public about the land use changes caused by this infrastructure project.

1. Navigating the Map
   1. Use the zoom-in and zoom-out buttons on the bottom right corner or use your mouse wheel to get a closer view or a broader perspective.
   2. Click and drag the map to move to different areas of interest.
2. Accessing Property Information
   1. To view the unique identifying information of a specific property, simply click on the respective polygon.
   2. Upon clicking, a pop-up window will appear displaying details such as the property address, acquisition date, size, and any other relevant notes or references.
3. Layers & Legend
   1. On the right side of the screen, you'll find the layers and legend buttons.
4. Feedback and Questions
   1. If you know anyone who lived in any of these mapped houses (or if the house was demolished by the freeway but in a different area), please reach out to the project team. Contact information is linked in the "About" section! Our goal is to create a living archive of those displaced by the freeways.

Feel free to explore the map and gain insights into the properties acquired for the construction of the I-280/SR-87 interchange. Your understanding and awareness of this project are valuable to us, and this tool aims to provide you with accurate and user-friendly information.

 ^{Due to land use changes and challenges related to the georeferencing process, there are minor discrepancies between the georeferenced aerial imagery from 1960 and present-day conditions. Additionally, inconsistent Caltrans record keeping means that some properties lack images or relevant attribute information.} 

This tour highlights ten selected properties the state acquired to make room for the freeway, and dives into greater detail about who inhabited them. These houses are a small sampling meant to reflect how each property had a history and story to them. Note that a few of these houses are still standing. Sometimes the state bought people out of their homes and didn't end up demolishing the properties, so the houses were placed back onto the housing market.

According to our study, 71% of the property owners who were bought out had owned their homes and businesses for more than five years - that's over 300 properties with families, renters and small businesses that had long established roots in the community.

The assessed value of the land and houses in our area of study was about $6.9 million dollars in 1967. Adjusted for inflation, this equals about $68 million dollars in 2023. The files note that some people negotiated for higher payouts, but the vast majority accepted the Right of Way Division's value assessment and offer.

The scope of this project did not include a detailed review of how the assessors made their value calculations and how they compared the properties within the right of way to those outside the project area. Did assessors demonstrate bias and systematically undervalue homes? Caltrans never considered another route for Interstate 280; did they choose the route based on their assumptions about lower home values and communities of color not being organized enough to put up a fight?

Even without such a detailed analysis, we know that property owners who were bought suffered financially in the long term, losing out on the tremendous gains in property value over the last sixty years throughout the Bay Area. This perpetuated cycles of inequality as families removed from their properties were not able to pass on the wealth created in their homes and secured by mortgages to the next generation.

The Caltrans Right of Way Assessments 1960 - 1970 is the archival collection that anchors this project. The collection is housed in the California Room Local History collection at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Public Library. The collection includes 31 boxes that contain documents, maps, and photographs that the CalTrans Right of Way division created when assessing the properties the State intended to purchase so they could demolish the neighborhood and build the new freeways. While the archive contains the assessment information for all of the homes and other structures that were eventually demolished for the I-280/I-680/SR-87 freeways, the focus of this study was on the quadrant beneath the I-280/SR-87 Interchange.

Right of Way (R/W) is a division within Caltrans that manages the process of buying land needed for state transportation projects. R/W also oversees the relocation of affected families, businesses, and utilities from those lands and clears properties prior to construction.

While the materials in the Right of Way archives have a great amount of detail about the individual properties that were assessed and demolished, on their own, they don't tell us much about the bigger picture. These documents and folders are a record of the end of the process of buying out property owners, but why was the freeway built here in the first place? There are no records of the discussion of where to put the freeway and how this route through a community of color was selected.

The assessors' job was to calculate a value for each piece of property and the house or other improvements on it. They entered each home to assess its value and took at least one photograph of each property. Despite the personal, intimate nature of the work, throughout the files and photographs the property is central and people are incidental, if mentioned at all. The few files that mention an interaction with the homeowner often note that the assessor's visit was the first time the resident had heard about the planned freeway construction and the state's intention to buy them out.

The images are similarly impersonal snapshots of the front of a house. Many are poorly framed, unfocused, and poorly lit; these were for reference, not mementos. But together they form a detailed, exhaustive, and perhaps final visual record of streets and neighborhoods that were soon after destroyed.

Less than forty of the images in our study have people in them: A woman waters the lawn as children look on, a man with white pants standing on the porch with his hands in his pockets. An older woman wearing a sweater, skirt, and clogs, with her hair wrapped in a scarf, sweeps the leaves off the sidewalk. A man kneels down on a rag to work on a car, raised up on a jack in his driveway. A young woman in a plaid dress and white flats squints into the sun at the assessor photographer across the street, her long shadow stretching towards a tidy front stoop. Laundry hanging out to dry; bicycles and tricycles resting on front lawns and side porches. A man in a short sleeve white button up shirt carrying a large white sheaf of paper strides purposefully across the street. He appears again in nearby photos, peering into properties - an assessor on the job? In one series of photos, children follow the assessor and pose in front of many houses, smiles on their faces, clearly enjoying the game of modeling for the strange photographer.

Caught in everyday life, they are not the focus of the assessor's lens, but in their normalcy they show that this was a neighborhood filled with life, despite the files' attempt to reduce it to a bottom line in a right-of-way cost assessment.

When the California Room in the San José Public Library acquired the Caltrans Right of Way Assessments, they created a spreadsheet describing the approximate location covered by each folder within, digitized a selection of about 70 items, and used a few of the items for the major East Side Dreams archival exhibit. Beneath I-280 is the first time that these documents have been processed and digitized at a the individual item level, investigating each folder to reveal more details about the information in the collection.

After an initial survey by the researchers of the much larger collection, the project bounds of the I-280 and SR-87 interchange were decided, largely because of the proximity to Downtown and to contemporary development projects. It is important to note here that the archive contains property assessment files for the entire length of the San José project, which spans from SR-17 to the west to I-680 to the east.

Data was collected from the files, images were scanned and processed, and the research team organized the spatial information using ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online.

The resultant  data set  consists of a spreadsheet with information on each parcel and a set of photographs of each property.

In the spreadsheet, the Parcel Number is the unique identifier that the assessors used to identify each property. Some parcels included multiple addresses. The Box Number and File Number refer to the parcel's specific box and folder location within the archival collection. Year refers to the year the assessment was performed. Information in Notes was sourced from the archival documents and/or interviews with former residents. The images are named by their parcel number. There are two sets of images: the uncropped digital files showing the original photograph on its page in the archive and cropped versions of each photo for use on the web. (Search for a name or address in the spreadsheet to find its parcel number and corresponding images.)

The data set also includes a new map and layers available ArcGIS Online  here . The interactive map includes layers that show the historic parcels and roads in the study area, outlines of the freeway,  a composite aerial view of San Jose from 1968 , and an integrated data table with the new information on residents and properties. It is

 The Implications of Freeway Siting in California: Four Case Studies on the Effects of Freeways on Neighborhoods of Color  Related Sources 

 Complete Finding Aid for the Archival Collection in the California Room 

Title Video Licensed from Adobe Stock

Leila Ullmann, Project Director*

Born and raised in downtown San José, less than a mile from the project focus area, Leila Ullmann has always been curious about the relationships between people and place, spanning past, present, and future. Her research focus and methods draw from her experience as a community organizer, an academic researcher, and a political strategist. She applies an explicitly abolitionist framework to all her work and orients her work towards building a world free from capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. She is currently a visiting scholar with the Institute for Metropolitan Studies. She received her B.A. cum laude from Princeton University in African American Studies and Dance and is currently pursuing a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning at UCLA.

*For comments, feedback, or any further information the project area, contact Leila at leila.ullmann@sjsu.edu

Gordon Douglas, Faculty Supervisor

Gordon Douglas is the director of the Institute for Metropolitan Studies and an associate professor in SJSU's Department of Urban and Regional Planning. His work focuses on social inequality in planning and development, neighborhood identity and gentrification, and peoples’ relationships to their physical surroundings. His first book, The Help-Yourself City (Oxford, 2018), concerns people who create unauthorized but functional “do-it-yourself urban design” interventions in their communities and his writing and photography has appeared in a variety of academic journals, books, magazines, newspapers, and websites. He is currently working on local organizing efforts around affordable housing production, safe streets, and the rights of our unhoused community members in San José and Oakland. 

Maxwell Friedman, Graduate Student Researcher

Maxwell Friedman is a graduate student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program at San José State University. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Media Arts and Studies from Ohio University. He has since focused his studies on the application of geospatial technology in promoting sustainability in planning. Maxwell is currently working as an intern for the City of San José Department of Transportation in which he helps prepare grant applications to fund the creation of sustainable transportation infrastructure and policy.

Bennett Williamson, Graduate Student Researcher

Growing up in a commuter cyclist family in an interior suburb of Boston, Bennett Williamson developed early interests in infrastructure, graffiti, and interstitial spaces in the urban fabric. Now a student in San José State's Masters of Urban and Regional Planning program, his research focuses on housing, transit, pedestrians, and public spaces - the building blocks of a human-centered approach to planning for people over cars. Contact: bennett.williamson@sjsu.edu

Matthew Schroeder, Graduate Student Researcher

Born in nearby Campbell, California, Matthew Schroeder is an avid cyclist with a deep appreciation for environmental sustainability and conservation. After earning a degree in environmental policy from Seattle University, Matthew decided to pursue a Master of Urban Planning degree in 2021. Matthew is a 2023 SJSU Master of Urban Planning graduate and now works as a transportation planner for the City of Cupertino.

We extend our gratitude to Mr. Isidoro P. Inda and Ms. Kathy Chavez-Napoli for sharing their stories with the researchers about the hardship of losing their homes to the freeway project. This project is dedicated to each of them and to every person and family who lost their home at the hands of the state to make room for the freeway. This is also dedicated to their descendants, who never had a chance to experience the home.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Shane Curtin, the head librarian of the California Room at the San José Public Library, without whose unyielding support and endless wisdom, this project would not be possible. We also thank the staff at the California Room for all of their support, as well as Kathryn Blackmer-Reyes and Estella Inda from the San José State University Special Collections and Archives.

We thank Ryan Smith for creating the building outlines for the precise project area long before this project was even dreamed of, and Professor Rick Kos for his unflinching support and advice on the spatial mapping of the project.