Los Gatos is part of Silicon Valley, with several high technology companies maintaining a presence there.

Netflix, the streaming service and content creator, is headquartered in Los Gatos and has developed a large presence in the area.

[10] The name derives from the 1839 Alta California land grant that encompassed the area, which was called La Rinconada de Los Gatos ("The Corner of the Cats"), where the cats refers to the cougars (mountain lions) and bobcats that are indigenous to the foothills in which the town is located.

Despite being nearby to logging communities, Los Gatos itself only served as a stopping point for those heading into the mountains.

With the creation of the Los Gatos Turnpike road, the town was placed in a strategic position on the journey between San Jose and Santa Cruz, and it became an attractive location to live in.

In 1852 only one adobe home existed in the area; by 1868 Los Gatos held the Mill, a blacksmith shop, a stage depot, a lumber yard, a temporary schoolhouse, a hotel, a post office, and several houses.

By the 1920s, the Los Gatos area had a local reputation as an arts colony, attracting painters, musicians, writers, actors and their bohemian associates as residents over the years.

The violinist Yehudi Menuhin lived there as a boy;[17] the actresses Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland (sisters) were graduates of Los Gatos High School; John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath there (the location is now located in Monte Sereno); Justin Goodsell, a renowned quantum mechanics spectroscopy scientist,[18] was born in this town, and a prominent Beat hero Neal Cassady lived there in the 1950s.

Along with much of the Santa Clara Valley, Los Gatos became a suburban community for San Jose beginning in the 1950s, and the town was mostly built out by the 1980s.

[20][21] A number of brick buildings in downtown Los Gatos were destroyed or seriously damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, though the district was quickly rebuilt and has made a full recovery.

Rail transport played a large role in Los Gatos's historical development, but the city, as of 2020, has no regular passenger train service of any sort.

The South Pacific Coast Railroad, a popular narrow-gauge line from Alameda (and San Francisco via ferry) to Santa Cruz in the late 19th century, stopped in Los Gatos.

Los Gatos was also near the Southern Pacific resort town of Holy City, along the rail line in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The last Southern Pacific passenger train to Santa Cruz left Los Gatos on February 26, 1940.

In town, the rail line used to run along the shore of Vasona Reservoir to the present-day location of the Post Office, following the path of what is now a continuous string of parking lots between Santa Cruz Ave. and University Ave.

There was also a streetcar-type rail line called the Peninsular Railway with service to Saratoga and San Jose that started about 1905 and ended about 1933.

While VTA had originally planned to extend their Green Line to Vasona Junction and bring back passenger rail to the city, the extension was cut short to Winchester due to the high cost of the extension, minimal expected ridership gains, and the difficulty of sharing rail right-of-way to Vasona Junction with Union Pacific freight trains.

[24] About 1861, small amounts of oil were discovered in streams, springs, and water wells in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the vicinity of Moody Gulch, about 4 miles (6.5 km) south of the Los Gatos Post Office.

[25] Although commercial production was never established, small amounts of oil were produced for use as fuel, lubricant, and road tar by local residents.

State Route 85 roughly marks the northern boundary of the town, although a few pockets of homes to its North are included.

Downtown Los Gatos, the area on and around Santa Cruz Avenue and Main Street, is located in the southwest quadrant of town.

Although the town has generally a quiet setting, its principal noise generators are State Route 17 and Los Gatos Boulevard.

Though the official total area of the town is 11.2 square miles, approximately 100 square miles (260 km2) of the surrounding Los Gatos Mountains (within the Santa Cruz Mountains range) has a Los Gatos address and uses the 95033 ZIP code (primarily) for U.S.

People of German descent made up 11.1% of the population of the town, followed by English at 10.7%, Irish at 8.0%, Italian at 7.0%, French at 3.0%, American at 2.5%, Ukrainian at 2.3%, Swedish at 2.1%, Russian at 2.1%, Scottish at 2.0%, Polish at 1.6%, Portuguese at 1.4%, Greek at 1.4%, Arab at 1.3%, Norwegian at 1.2%, Dutch at 1.0%, Hungarian at 0.9%, Danish at 0.8%, Welsh at 0.7%, Sub-Saharan African at 0.6%, Scotch-Irish at 0.6%, and Czech at 0.6%.

The seal of the town contains an image of the pair of cat sculptures by sculptor Robert Paine that he made for the estate of Charles Erskine Scott Wood and Sara Bard Field.

For railroad transportation the nearby city of Santa Clara has the closest train station served by Caltrain, and nearby in the city of Campbell provides access to VTA light rail via the Winchester, Downtown Campbell, and Hamilton stations.

In 2017, the school district attracted attention for a dress code that targeted specific groups disproportionately.

The library is located at 100 Villa Ave, Los Gatos, CA in the town Civic Center.

[54] Los Gatos offers a variety of outdoor activities such as mountain biking, road cycling, trail running, kayaking, hiking.

The Los Gatos Creek Trail is nearby and Vasona Lake Park is located in the center of the town.