Hidden Villa

Hidden Villa is a United States nonprofit educational organization teaching programs on environmental and multicultural awareness. In 1924, Frank and Josephine Duveneck founded this working organic farm and wilderness area on land comprising the upper Adobe Creek watershed on the foothills of Black Mountain in Los Altos Hills, California, part of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Hidden Villa is important historically as the site of the West's first American youth hostel and the nation's first multicultural children's summer camp.

The land between Moody Road and Adobe Creek was part of the Rancho La Purísima Concepción land grant given in 1840 to José Gorgonio and his son José Ramon, Ohlone Indians of Mission Santa Clara, by Governor Juan Alvarado.

George Washington Moody built Moody Road in 1867, from the Mountain View Railway station through what is now Hidden Villa Ranch to connect to Mayfield-Pescadero Road (now Page Mill Road). Moody was a farmer and native of Missouri whose home ultimately became Hidden Villa Ranch. Moody’s home was located on present day Moody Creek.

In 1887, the 600-plus acres of Hidden Villas were purchased by Otto Arnold, a native of Saxony. Mr. Arnold accompanied Governor Milton Latham to America, and became a resident of San Francisco in 1864 where he, along with Latham, was connected with the London and San Francisco Bank Ltd (now MUFG Union Bank). After the death of his widow, Elvira Arnold, in 1904, Hidden Villa was owned by Captain George Ewing, for whom Ewing Hill (the source of the West Branch of Permanente Creek) is named. Frank Boott Duveneck, son of the painters Frank Duveneck and Elizabeth Boott, and his wife Josephine, daughter of Henry Melville Whitney, bought the then 1,400 acres of Hidden Villa in 1923 for "$10 in gold coin and the payment of a $20,000 mortgage". The Duvenecks remodeled the White House at Hidden Villa, which dates from the 1860s, when it was built as a stagecoach stop and inn for a stage running from San Jose to Pescadero. The White House was also known as the Halfway House because it was halfway between the two cities (eight miles from each one). In 1930 the Duvenecks built their permanent home on the knoll.

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