Los Gatos is home to many great things, many great ideas too, but also home to many fascinating people who are successful in their own fields. The list includes CEOs, sports celebrities, and other famous people.  Wikipedia lists several of our Los Gatos contemporaries who are very well known, and if you live here, you do bump into them at Whole Foods, a restaurant, or maybe your child's school.  They're just normal people, trying to lead normal lives.  I, for one, won't bug them if I see them in public or at some function where we happen to be together. I once spent a year in a body cast and it made me appreciate, deeply, how important it is just to be treated like a "normal person" - no matter what the circumstances are.

But Los Gatos has often been a popular place among those who could choose to live or visit anywhere they wanted - this is not a new experience for our pretty town. John Steinbeck lived here and wrote "Of Mice and Men" in those days. Charlie Chaplin came to visit and was seen a few times at the old Lyndon Hotel in the days when he was filming at Niles Canyon (a district of Fremont). The famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin lived in Los Gatos, up near the Holy Names Sisters convent and the Jesuit Novitiate, for a bit of time in his childhood. It was a treasured time for him.

Want to read up on well-known visitors? Take a look:

Visiting Movie Stars:
http://www.community-newspapers.com/archives/lgwt/10.17.01/pics-past-0142.html
Visiting Presidents:
http://www.losgatos.com/history/presidents.html

In addition to all the famous (and those of us who are not-so-famous) people who have enjoyed making Los Gatos home, there was a time in which ordinary, but very ill, people would pilgrimmage here too. The climate was so favorable it was prescribed. Did you ever wonder about the fact that Los Gatos was so small, but for many years had two mortuaries? Many of these sickly folk did improve here, but many others did not. Read John Baggerly's surprising bit of history as Los Gatos, the health refuge: http://www.losgatos.com/history/climate.html .

Finally, some residents just won't leave, even when their earthly life is over. If you are interested in our (mostly) unseen residents, please visit a page on one of my websites dedicated to Haunted Real Estate. Los Gatos is a featured location and I discuss there the old cemetary (which has shops over it now) and other places where the townsfolk remain in spirit.  

Parts of Town

My husband, Jim Handy, likes to joke that just like there’s an “East Palo Alto”, there’s also an “East Los Gatos” – and that is where we live.  It’s not a jurisdictional boundary, just a descriptive one with no real function except to give a sense of place.

What is east Los Gatos? What is west Los Gatos?

Highway 17 pretty much splits the town east-west and is the unofficial boundary for each side of town, though I have known others to think of Los Gatos Boulevard as the line.  Another freeway, Highway 85 (The West Valley Freeway) is the approximate northern boundary of town, though the exact boundary zigs and zags enthusiastically.

There are many distinct neighborhoods in Los Gatos beyond the general “east Los Gatos” or “downtown” areas, and in future blogs I’ll discuss each one, but here are a few of the areas: Fairview Plaza, The Almond Grove, Blossom Hill Manor (Blossom Manor), The Edelyn District, St. Joseph’s Hill, Belgatos and Belwood of Los Gatos, Surrey Farms, The Alta Vista area and more.

And there are several school districts in Los Gatos too. This really confounds people who move to the Santa Clara Valley from other places. “What do you mean I can buy a home in Los Gatos and not have Los Gatos Schools?”  The reason is simple: the school district boundaries predate the current boundaries of many of our cities and towns. So what used to be “out in the country”, a county pocket, now belongs to Los Gatos, or Saratoga, or any other municipality. Union Middle School, for example, is on the boundary of (east) Los Gatos and San Jose (the Cambrian district). So it serves kids who live in San Jose, Los Gatos, and also the county pockets in that area.  

Of course, Los Gatos is not a young town and so it also has officially designated historical districts and places.

And then there are the mountain communities.  Just up “the hill” off highway 17 there are many neighborhood hamlets that have a Los Gatos mailing address but are actually county lands and not part of the town per se. Redwood Estates, Chemeketa Park, Aldercroft Heights and others are not really “in town” officially or juriddictionally, but they share the mailing address and are, in effect, a social part of the town if not a voting component.

If you’d like to get to know Los Gatos better, the best way is to start downtown and take a walking (or slow driving) tour. The Chamber of Commerce has a fine little introductory tour available on their website here:
http://www.losgatosweb.com/lgwalkingtour.html

Enjoy!

Mary Pope-Handy, Realtor, CRS, ABR, e-PRO, SRES, ASP, RECS, CNHS
Helping Nice Folks to Buy & Sell Homes Since 1993
Co-Author: "Get The Best Deal When Selling Your Home In Silicon Valley"
www.PopeHandy.com  www.ValleyOfHeartsDelight.com  
www.BelwoodOfLosGatos.com
emailto: Mary@PopeHandy.com
Blog: www.LiveInLosGatos.com (http://LiveInLosGatos.RealTownBlogs.com)