Most towns organize their summers around a main street. Los Altos Hills does not have one. What it has instead are three publicly held anchors, each donated or preserved decades ago, that quietly carry the season: a 15-acre town-owned horse barn, a foothill preserve stitched into a resident pathways network, and a 1,600-acre organic farm at the end of Moody Road. If you already live here, the interesting question is not what to do this summer. It is how these three places actually connect, and why the calendar looks the way it does.
The short version of the thesis: the town's summer isn't programmed by a downtown business association. It is programmed by a barn, a preserve, and a farm that predate most of the houses around them. Understanding the season means understanding those three addresses.
Westwind, the barn the town owns
Westwind Community Barn sits on 15 acres adjacent to Byrne Preserve. Countess Margit Bessenyey originally ran it as a breeding and training facility for her Hungarian horses, worked out of it with Linda Tellington-Jones, and donated the site to the Town in 1976. A 2009 renovation added a 50-by-100-foot dressage court, a 100-by-200-foot jumping arena, and a 51-foot Eurofelt round pen.
That backstory matters because it explains why Westwind functions less like a private stable and more like a civic amenity. It is town-owned. Victoria Dye Equestrian runs two horse shows a year there, and the Town runs five community events a year on the same grounds. Summer camp runs from June 8 to August 6, registered through the Los Altos Hills Parks and Recreation Department, and residents receive a 10% discount on lessons and packages. The Westwind Riding Institute, operated through Santa Clara County 4-H, holds free adaptive riding classes for children with physical disabilities on Monday evenings in July.
If your kids are at camp there, you are probably already using the second anchor without realizing it.
Byrne Preserve and the pathways that run behind it
Westwind's back gate opens onto Byrne Preserve. The town's Pathways system, a network of dirt paths that runs along road easements and through open space, threads through the preserve and connects to the roads most residents already walk. This is the physical reason Los Altos Hills feels different from the flat grid towns north of Foothill Expressway. The pathways are not a park. They are the circulation layer of the town itself.
The 24th Annual Pathways Run/Walk on May 9, 2026 makes the geography legible. The course starts at Westwind, cuts through Byrne Preserve, and picks up the Pathways system from there. The 5K and 10K are both described as hilly and challenging. Early-bird registration through February 28 was $45 for the 5K or 10K and $30 for the 1-mile fun run, with regular pricing at $50 and $35 through race day, and $5 off per person for groups of ten or larger. It is worth registering in advance because the trail width does not accommodate a bib-day surge.
The preserve itself is open outside of race day for habitat-restoration volunteer days and self-guided walks. Sunday afternoons in the shoulder hours, roughly an hour before sunset, are the least trafficked window if you want the trail to yourself.
Before the third anchor, here is the summer at a glance:
| Date | Anchor | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| May 9, 2026 | Westwind → Byrne → Pathways | 24th Annual Pathways Run/Walk, 5K, 10K, and 1-mile fun run |
| June 7, 2026, 12–4 PM | Purissima Park | 27th Annual Town Picnic, residents only |
| June 8 – August 6, 2026 | Westwind Community Barn | Victoria Dye Equestrian summer camp series |
| June 15 – July 31, 2026 | Hidden Villa | Seven day-camp sessions, K–4 |
| Monday evenings, July 2026 | Westwind | Westwind Riding Institute adaptive lessons, Santa Clara County 4-H |
The Town Picnic, and why residency matters at the gate
The 27th Annual Los Altos Hills Town Picnic returns to Purissima Park on Sunday, June 7, 2026, from noon to 4 PM. Complimentary barbecue, ice cream sundaes and root beer floats, sodas, beer and wine, a classic car show featuring more than 60 vehicles, pony rides, inflatables, and live entertainment. Advance registration is required, proof of residency is checked at the door, and pets are not permitted on-site. Biking to the event is encouraged, which is a polite way of saying parking on Purissima Road will not scale to the crowd.
The resident-only policy is the interesting part. It is one of the few days a year the town gates a public park behind an address, and it reliably produces the strongest attendance of the summer.
Hidden Villa, 1,600 acres at the end of Moody Road
Drive west on Moody past the last mailbox and you reach Hidden Villa, a nonprofit farm and wilderness preserve at 26870 Moody Road. The property covers roughly 1,600 acres of foothills at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains. It is open to visitors dawn to dusk, with the education garden, hiking trails, and animal pens accessible without a reservation.
The farm has been running a summer camp on this land since 1945. In 2025, more than 700 children in grades K–12 attended, and the 2026 day-camp calendar for kindergarten through fourth grade runs seven five-day sessions: June 15–19, June 22–26, June 29–July 3, July 6–10, July 13–17, July 20–24, and July 27–31. Days run 9 AM to 4 PM with extended care from 8 to 9 and 4 to 5. Third and fourth graders can add a Thursday-night overnight. General registration opened at 10 AM on Saturday, January 10, 2026, and popular sessions were already sold through by early spring.
The programming outside camp is what most residents underuse. Adults and kids ten and older can sign up for a morning hand-milking class with the resident dairy cow. The historic blacksmith shop runs demonstrations. Weekend volunteer training folds new residents into the property with real work: garden, animals, trails. The parking lot is unlit, which is the small detail that tells you this is still a working farm, not a park.
Off the three anchors: what else is on the calendar
A few things worth putting on the calendar that sit adjacent to the three anchors:
- Foothill College at 12345 El Monte Road hosts Smithwick Theatre and the Krause Center. Day on the Hill returns to the campus on Saturday, May 2, 2026 from 9:30 AM, and the Sheep Shearing and Fiber Arts Festival runs the same day at Hidden Villa's Dana Center. Doubling the two on one Saturday is a legitimate move.
- The State of the Cities address on Friday, May 8, 2026 at 11 AM brings joint remarks from Los Altos Hills Mayor Rajiv Bhateja and Los Altos Mayor Sally Meadows. Residents who want to know what is coming to the Pathways budget or the Westwind capital plan should be in that room.
- The Los Altos Hills Horsemen's Association runs member events throughout the summer aimed at keeping the town's horse-friendly infrastructure in use. Membership is open to residents who want to protect trail easements and ride-outs.
How a resident's summer week actually strings together
The season works because the three anchors are within a fifteen-minute drive of each other and each solves a different problem. Westwind handles the equestrian and structured-childcare piece from June through early August. Byrne Preserve and the Pathways system handle the daily walk and the once-a-year 10K. Hidden Villa handles the farm education, the weekend hike with out-of-town guests, and the sold-out camp your neighbor put a January calendar reminder in for.
A useful pattern for a Saturday in July: hand-milking at Hidden Villa at 8 AM, a loop through Byrne Preserve from the Westwind lot on the way home, and back in your kitchen by 11. A useful pattern for a Sunday evening: the last hour of Pathways before sunset, then a drive up Moody with the windows down. Neither of these requires a reservation, a price of admission, or a downtown.
That is the mechanical answer to why this town does not have a main street. It has a barn, a preserve, and a farm instead, and they were all put in place by residents and donors decades ago specifically so that summer here would look like this.
If a move within Los Altos Hills is on the horizon, or you are preparing an estate for sale and want the marketing to reflect what actually makes this town different from Los Altos or Palo Alto, Straser Silicon Valley can help. Request a white-glove consultation to start the conversation.
