Residents who have been fighting to save the Willow Glen Trestle from demolition were dealt a blow last week when they got word that the National Register of Historic Places declared the old railroad bridge ineligible for historic status.
But the decision came as good news to San Jose city officials who have been trying for almost three years to tear down the span and replace it with a prefabricated one.
Although the state Historic Resources Commission unanimously determined in May that the trestle is eligible to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places, a federal historian disagreed. The historian wrote in a report dated July 5 but apparently not circulated until recently that the bridge’s historic significance was overstated and its eligibility for the list was “not sufficiently justified.”
San Jose District 6 Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, who has led the fight to raze the old span and finally finish the Los Gatos Creek Trail connection, said it is “great to see that the federal historians, who review historical nominations daily, found the trestle not historic.”
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