Historical Marker · No. 644
Home of Martin Murphy, Jr.
Sunnyvale, Santa Clara County · California
Erected by the California State Park Commission in cooperation with the City of Sunnyvale and the Sunnyvale Historical Society, 1960
Elizabeth Whittier, the last of the family in the house, sold it to the city so it would be saved, and the state registered it in 1958. A year after this bronze went up, a bulldozer took it down before dawn, after months of argument; accounts give fire damage or the coming Central Expressway as the reason. The house had arrived in pieces, milled in Bangor, Maine, shipped around Cape Horn and held together here with pegs and leather straps. A replica built from old photographs opened in 2008 at Heritage Park. An Anza trail plaque shares this rock.
What the plaque says
Home of Martin Murphy, Jr. Martin Murphy, Jr., arrived in California with his family in 1844 in the first wagon train to cross the Sierra Nevada. The founder of Sunnyvale, he constructed here his house of pre-fabricated lumber, brought around the Horn in 1849. Members of the Murphy family lived here continuously until 1953, when the property was acquired by the City of Sunnyvale. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 644 Plaque placed by the California State Park Commission in cooperation with the City of Sunnyvale and the Sunnyvale Historical Society. May 22, 1960.
Where it stands
37.38209, -122.02634 · Directions