This intersection on the Old Stage Road between San Francisco and Los Angeles was the second and last location of Natividad, a busy and important staging and business establishment before Salinas city was created. Originally at the Gavilan House at Lagunita two and one-half miles north, the United States Post Office moved here in 1865, and around it grew a trading post of stores, a coast stage depot and stables, a hotel, a schoolhouse, and the saloon and billiard hall kept by Michael Alpite, whose multi-colored sign proclaimed wines, liquors, and cigars. The arrival of the railroad at Salinas in 1872 began Natividad's decline. The Post Office closed in 1908, and the dilapidated Natividad saloon on this corner, the last proud commercial vestige of a true Old West ghost town, was demolished in the summer of 1964.