The Bumb family built the Flea Market and ran it for decades. George Bumb Sr. co-founded the operation; his son Brian Bumb Sr. became a supervisor and part owner alongside his brothers George Jr. and Timothy. The family business eventually encompassed not just the market itself but the restaurants on its grounds, the entertainment venues, and the land beneath all of it. That land -- 120.3 acres straddling Berryessa Road, with 57 acres to the north and 63 to the south -- would eventually become the family's most valuable and most contested asset, as San Jose's explosive growth transformed the once-peripheral site into prime real estate.

On the evening of November 29, 2006, fire tore through 24 stands of Produce Row. The 911 call came at 6:02 p.m., and dozens of fire crews plus a helicopter responded. By 7:15 p.m. the blaze was contained, but $200,000 in merchandise lay destroyed -- burnt nuts, charred fruit, melted plastic scattered across the ground. Theresa Bumb, Brian's daughter, promised free or reduced rent for the affected vendors. The fire was a blow, but it was not the existential threat facing the market. The Produce Row that burned was the heart of a quarter-mile-long farmers' market selling California-grown fruits and vegetables, the kind of place where regulars knew which vendor had the best stone fruit in July.

San Jose wanted the land. In August 2007, the City Council approved a proposal to rezone the Berryessa Road property for a 2,800-house development, passing the motion 10 to 1. The sole dissenter voted against it not because the plan was wrong but because the requirements imposed on the Bumb family were too harsh. The family had no immediate timeline for development, but the writing was on the wall. When the Berryessa BART station opened nearby in 2020, transit-oriented development swallowed the northern parking lots. A Safeway and CVS Pharmacy rose on the northwest corner of Berryessa and Sierra Road. The triangular southern parcel where vendors still hawked jewelry, furniture, and collectibles was proposed for commercial buildings.

What made the Flea Market endure was never just the merchandise. Two stages hosted live entertainment every weekend, one permanently reserved for a Mexican mariachi band. A vintage carousel spun alongside an arcade, three playgrounds, and carnival rides. Traveling food carts sold beer, soda, and churros between the fixed restaurants offering both American and Mexican fare. For many families in east San Jose, the market was a weekend ritual -- part shopping trip, part social outing, part cultural anchor. Khaled Hosseini understood this when he set key scenes of The Kite Runner at the San Jose Flea Market, capturing the way an immigrant community could find itself in the organized chaos of a weekend bazaar.

The tension between what the Flea Market was and what the land could become defined its later decades. Silicon Valley's appetite for housing and office space made 120 acres of open-air vendor stalls look like an anachronism, a relic of a time when land in San Jose was cheap enough to spread out on. But the market's defenders pointed to something the developers' spreadsheets could not capture: the income it provided to thousands of vendor families, the community it sustained, the sheer improbability of a place where you could still find a deal, eat well, and hear live music on a Sunday afternoon -- all without a reservation, a membership, or a cover charge.