The Stanfords wanted no alcohol at their university’s gate, and Mayfield’s saloons were the reason they backed a separate town. A guide of 1896 noted that “there are no saloons” and that every deed carried a clause forever prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors.
David Starr Jordan wrote that every lot was bought on that condition, and a county history of 1922 said the saloon “never existed” in Palo Alto. Mayfield itself banned saloons from January 1905.