Alexander H. Schilling, known as Mike, was the youngest grandson of August Schilling who founded A. Schilling & Company, purveyor of coffee, tea, and spices, in 1870. He acquired substantial lands around the southern shores of San Francisco Bay, speculating that they might be future sites for a trans-Pacific shipping terminal. He established several small salt companies along the bay shore that later merged with Leslie Salt Company; the Schilling family were the majority stockholders in Leslie Salt until its sale to Cargill in the 1970s. Mike Schilling was born in fall 1929, and his early years were spent on two grand estates rented by his parents on the peninsula. His recollections of childhood and youth depict a vanished era. Later when he returned to the peninsula in the 1950s to raise his own family, he worked from 1958-1971 at Ampex Corporation, a pioneering technology company in what is now known as Silicon Valley. Later in life, he helped to preserve the landscape and viewscape of a rural enclave on the peninsula, as a member of Portola Valley’s Architectural Site and Control Commission.