- Rucker, California
Rucker is an historic district in unincorporated
Santa Clara County, California located halfway along the five miles of Monterey Highway betweenGilroy, California and San Martin. The name is official but not in common use among locals today. [
] Its official elevation is listed as 235 feet above mean sea level (AMSL) and official NAD27 coordinates are given as coord|37|03|15|N|121|35|28|W. [U.S. Geological Survey, National Geographic Names Database.] Supporting the name are a street named "Rucker Avenue", "Rucker School" (K-6), and "Rucker Creek": geographic features in the same area. [
] The name is historic and probably commemorative: almost no one refers to this area as Rucker today. The community was part of the Mexican Land Grant called San Francisco de las Llagas. [
]References corroborate use of the name in 1933 to describe a siding on what is now the
Union Pacific Railroad , Coast Subdivision. [Holmes, Norman W., "Prune Country Railroading: Steel Rails to San Jose", (Huntington Beach, California: Shade Tree Books, 1995), pp.135.] It still appears on modern maps. ["California Region Timetable: 14", (Modesto, California: Altamont Press, 2003).] [
]The community is inside
area code 408 and default wired telephone service comes from theVerizon Gilroy exchange. The district is inZIP code 95020.At the southern edge of the San Jose metropolitan area, the community is gradually being developed. The area has historically been agricultural with many present-day area homes having an acre of land or more and horses. Homes often include mature trees and primitive barbed-wire fences. Area crops include turf, alfalfa and other irrigated row crops.
References
External links
* [http://bard.wr.usgs.gov/historical/jpg/morganhill1917r47.jpg1917 map of area showing "Rucker".]
* [http://santaclararesearch.net/sargents.html Sargent's Juristac Rancho]
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