Glossary

The words you’ll hear around Los Gatos — places, history, weather and local ways, explained

Search the glossary

Architecture

Almond Grove: A historic district of Victorian and early 20th-century houses west of Santa Cruz Avenue, laid out on a 40-acre almond orchard as the first and largest subdivision after incorporation.
Broadway (Los Gatos): The first residential street in Los Gatos, opened in 1883 through John W. Lyndon’s 1881 subdivision of 48 lots; now a historic district.
Downtown Commercial Historic District: The cluster of 1890s-1930s commercial buildings along West Main Street, North Santa Cruz Avenue and University Avenue, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
Fairview Plaza: A Victorian and Craftsman cul-de-sac with a landscaped island, surveyed in 1885 as part of the Fairview Addition; a town historic district.
University-Edelen: A historic district near University Avenue and Edelen Avenue, cut from the Mason Tract in 1880 into small subdivisions that all predate 1900.
Yung See San Fong: “Young’s Home in the Heart of the Hills”: a 1917 hillside house in Los Gatos that combines Chinese decoration and pagoda roofs with Western layout. It is a private home.

Events

Children’s Christmas/Holidays Parade: The downtown holiday parade on the first Saturday of December, run by the Los Gatos Lions Club, LGS Recreation and the Town; the 2024 parade was the 68th.
Fantasy of Lights: Santa Clara County Parks’ December holiday light show at Vasona Lake County Park, held since 1999, with walk-through nights and a nightly drive-through.
Fiesta de Artes: The Los Gatos Art & Wine Festival, a weekend of artists, wineries and live music at the Civic Center each September, run by the Kiwanis Club of Los Gatos since 1996.
Jazz on the Plazz: Free outdoor jazz concerts on Wednesday evenings each summer at Town Plaza, produced by the nonprofit Los Gatos Music & Arts.
Los Gatos Wine Walk: The Chamber of Commerce’s spring and fall tasting walk through downtown shops and restaurants, pouring wines mainly from the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Central Coast.
Music in the Park: The Town of Los Gatos’ free Sunday-afternoon summer concerts on the Civic Center lawn, held since 1988.

History & People

Bean Spray Pump: John Bean’s improved orchard spray pump, invented in Los Gatos to fight San Jose scale, which grew into the Food Machinery Corporation (FMC).
Forbes Mill: The stone flour mill on Los Gatos Creek, begun in the 1850s by James Alexander Forbes, around which the town grew. Its 1880 stone annex survives as a state historical landmark.
Holy City: A ghost town in the Santa Cruz Mountains founded in 1919 by the cult leader William Riker as a roadside stop on the old highway; it declined after Highway 17 bypassed it.
Hotel Lyndon: The grand two-story hotel on South Santa Cruz Avenue at Main Street, facing the train depot, that opened on June 1, 1899 and was demolished in 1963.
James Alexander Forbes: The Scottish-born British vice-consul who built Forbes Mill on Los Gatos Creek in the 1850s and gave the first name to the settlement around it.
John Steinbeck in Los Gatos: John and Carol Steinbeck lived on the edge of Los Gatos from 1936, and he wrote The Grapes of Wrath and finished Of Mice and Men in their house on Greenwood Lane.
John W. Lyndon: An early storekeeper and hotel owner, one of the town’s first trustees, who laid out Broadway in 1881 and built the Hotel Lyndon; often called the father of Los Gatos.
Lexington and Alma: Two mountain towns above Los Gatos, a sawmill town and a stage and rail stop, that were abandoned and flooded when Lexington Reservoir filled in 1952.
Loma Prieta earthquake: The magnitude 6.9 earthquake of October 17, 1989, centered in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which badly damaged downtown Los Gatos and closed Highway 17 for weeks.
Mountain Charley: Charles Henry McKiernan (about 1825-1892), an early Santa Cruz Mountains settler and stage-road builder who survived a grizzly attack; his name lived on in a downtown Los Gatos saloon.
Orchards and canneries: From the 1880s until the 1950s the hills and flats around Los Gatos were planted in prunes, apricots, cherries and grapes, and the town dried and canned their fruit.
Rinconada de los Gatos: The 6,631-acre Mexican land grant of 1840 that covered present-day Los Gatos, Monte Sereno and part of Campbell, and gave the town its name.
Sacred Heart Novitiate: The Jesuit training house on the hill above Los Gatos, founded in 1886-1888, whose winery made sacramental wine for 98 years; now the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center.
South Pacific Coast Railroad: The narrow-gauge railroad that reached Los Gatos in 1877 and crossed the Santa Cruz Mountains to Santa Cruz in 1880, starting the town’s boom.
The Cats: The hillside estate of writer Charles Erskine Scott Wood and poet Sara Bard Field above Highway 17, named for the two eight-foot white cat sculptures at its gate.

Local Life & Customs

Gem City of the Foothills: The old nickname of Los Gatos, used in early 20th-century guides and histories for a town built on terraces at the foot of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Los Gatos newspapers: From the Los Gatos Weekly News of the early 1880s to today’s Los Gatan, the town has had its own papers, plus the public-access station KCAT.
Netflix in Los Gatos: The streaming company Netflix has its headquarters in Los Gatos, with a campus beside the Los Gatos Creek Trail.

Nature & Wildlife

Cougars and bobcats: The “cats” of Los Gatos: mountain lions and bobcats live in the hills above town, and they gave the land grant and the town its name.
El Sereno and El Sombroso: The two mountains on either side of Los Gatos Creek’s canyon above town: El Sereno to the southwest and El Sombroso to the southeast. Both are now open space preserves.
Los Gatos Creek: The 24-mile creek that rises near Loma Prieta, fills Lexington and Vasona reservoirs and flows through Los Gatos and Campbell to the Guadalupe River in San Jose.
Santa Cruz Mountains AVA: The American Viticultural Area in the mountains above Los Gatos, established on December 4, 1981, one of the first defined by its mountain terrain.
Sierra Azul: The “Blue Mountains”: the Spanish name for the Santa Cruz Mountains south of Highway 17, now a 19,300-acre open space preserve with Mount Umunhum and El Sombroso.
Steelhead and salmon: Los Gatos Creek’s native rainbow trout and steelhead, and the Chinook salmon that now swim up it from San Francisco Bay.

Places

Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad: A nonprofit 18-inch-gauge steam railroad in Oak Meadow and Vasona parks, founded on the prune ranch of Southern Pacific engineer Billy Jones and run in the parks since 1970.
Highway 17: The winding mountain highway between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz, which runs through the middle of town; the stretch over the mountains is a designated safety corridor.
Lexington Reservoir: The reservoir above Los Gatos formed in 1952 by the James J. Lenihan Dam, which drowned the old towns of Lexington and Alma; now a county park for paddling, fishing and hiking.
Los Gatos: An incorporated town of about 33,500 people in Santa Clara County, in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains just southwest of San Jose. The name is Spanish for “the cats.”
Los Gatos Creek Trail: A 9.7-mile walking and cycling trail along Los Gatos Creek from Lexington Reservoir, past Forbes Mill and through Vasona, to Meridian Avenue in San Jose.
Monte Sereno: A small residential city bordered by Los Gatos on three sides, incorporated in 1957 and named for El Sereno mountain; John Steinbeck’s Greenwood Lane house is there.
New Museum Los Gatos (NUMU): The town’s art and history museum in the Civic Center on East Main Street, opened in 2015; it holds the collections of the old Forbes Mill history museum.
Oak Meadow Park: The Town of Los Gatos park next to Vasona Lake County Park, home of the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad depot and the W. E. “Bill” Mason Carousel.
Old Town: A shopping center on University Avenue in the buildings of the old University Avenue School, founded in 1882; the present buildings date from 1923.
Santa Cruz Avenue: The main shopping street of downtown Los Gatos, running north from Main Street; it became the business center after the 1901 fire on Main Street.
Testarossa: The winery in the old Novitiate cellars since 1997, counted as the fourth-oldest continuously operating winery in California because the Jesuits made altar wine through Prohibition.
Town Plaza: The small downtown park at Main Street and Santa Cruz Avenue, on the site of the old railroad station; home of Jazz on the Plazz, the farmers’ market and the holiday tree.
Vasona Lake County Park: A county park around Vasona Reservoir in the middle of town, with paddle boats, picnic lawns, the creek trail and, each December, the Fantasy of Lights.
W. E. “Bill” Mason Carousel: A historic carousel beside the Wildcat Railroad depot in Oak Meadow Park, built in 1915 and shown at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.