From 'Cots to Open Space: Stojanovich Family Park

Former Campbell Councilman Dan Furtado spent two summers in the early 1960s as many teens of that time did—picking 'cots and loading and drying plums.

"Farmers would pull up on Union Avenue when it was a rural road, and we would unload the lugs and dump them into a spot for washing and cleaning, Furtado recalls. "We would lay the plums out on trays and as they filled, we'd stack them on carts and move them inside the dehydrator."

Furtado smiles as he talks about his youth, his connection to the "Valley of the Heart's Delight" and stepping back onto this nostalgic site.

"It really does seem like yesterday," he says. "Especially when you stand here again."

Furtado is one of many who grew up in Campbell and the surrounding valley with memories and direct ties to when the area was a leader, not in computer chips but in agriculture.

"I'm very excited that it's going to be preserved and even more excited that it will reflect our agricultural roots," Furtado says.

Furtado isn't the only one jazzed about having the site reopened to the public as the , which had its groundbreaking Wednesday.

Eldred and Shirley Nelson were both at the groundbreaking. The two have lived in their Campbell home for 55 years and met while at Campbell High School.

Eldred also worked at the site during his youth.

"This is where they would turn the wheelbarrows around and push them into the dehydrator," he explains. "On the other side, you could monitor the moisture levels."

He and his wife walk around the shell of the former drying shed, he explaining his former duties, and his wife smiling.

"This time of year, young kids and sometimes even their mothers would come out to work here," says Anna Stojanovich.

Her husband's family owned the land in and around the site since 1913, when the Croatian immigrants moved to Campbell.

The family used the site as a processing site for local produce, then the family grew corn at the site and finally, as an RV parking lot for the friends of the family.

Anna Stojanovich sold the property to the city of Campbell for half it's market value in 2007 in order to build a public park.

"There's history here with the young children," Stojanovich says. "You depended on the local people to help process the food, and now, this will be a lovely park for the children of the neighborhood."