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 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 Duvenecks sheltered Japanese-Americans returning from internment camps and provided safe harbor for César Chávez as he organized farm workers in the fifties.

[7] This fulfilled the wishes of the Duvenecks, as Josephine Duveneck records in her book Life on Two Levels, "Our family came to the agreement that a large part of the wilderness area, including the creek and its pristine watershed, should be dedicated at our death to public use as a permanent wild life sanctuary.

This written record confirms oral histories taken by local historian Don McDonald that Adobe Creek used to flow year-round.

[14] In March, 2008, Hidden Villa leased ten acres of its land to the nonprofit charitable organization, Heifer International, providing the former with $100,000 per year in rental income.

Hidden Villa zoning is managed by Santa Clara County which requires a 150-foot (46 m) setback from the creek's bank.

[16] A letter to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors from FEMA designated a strip through the lower fields as having a 1 in 500 year chance of flooding.