It's rather rare to see the name William Mayhue on this grocery and feed store. The name dates the photograph to the five-year period from 1914-1919.

Joshua O. Newhall, proprietor of the Southern Hotel across the street and a relative of town founder Henry Mayo Newhall, built this general and dry goods store at the northwest corner of Market Street and Railroad Avenue in the 1880s and put his name on it. In the 1890s he sold the business and the building to grocer James Gulley, who put his name on it. In 1904, Gulley leased (at least a portion of) the building to Albert Swall, who ran a meat market inside it and added his name to it. In 1906, with Swall as tenant, Gulley sold the property to William Mayhue.

Around 1914, Mayhue and other property owners along the main street — Railroad Avenue — raised the rent. Swall and other merchants rebelled. Swall built his own building, complete with hotel, pharmacy and meat market, one block to the west at Market and Spruce streets. Over time, Spruce became the new main street. (It still is; now it's called Main Street.)

When Swall moved out, Mayhue put his own name on the building. In 1919, Mayhue's daughter, Opal, married an artist named Lloyd Houghton, and Mayhue sold the building to him. Houghton operated it as a dance hall (called Hap-A-Lan) and community room and Masonic lodge. (Exactly when it was called the El Dorado, presumably a nightclub, we don't know, but it was probably around 1919.)

In 1928, Houghton's community room-dance hall was the biggest place in town that could accomodate all of the bodies that kept coming in from San Francisquito Canyon for identification. Stigmatized, the building was torn down.