Chemeketa Park

Chemeketa Park is a small mountain community about five miles south of Los Gatos, up Highway 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The first thing to be clear about is jurisdiction, because it affects taxes, services and schools. Chemeketa Park is unincorporated Santa Clara County land, not part of the Town of Los Gatos. It carries a Los Gatos mailing address, which is why it is so often described as a Los Gatos neighborhood, but the town has no authority here and county services apply.

The community was laid out in 1925 and 1926 by a civil engineer named J. B. Balcomb on sixty three acres of former orchard, and it was sold originally as vacation cabin lots. Balcomb died in 1927 and his family continued selling parcels into the mid 1960s. By the middle of the 1930s people had started living here year round, and that is essentially what it has been ever since, a full time community built on summer cabin bones.

One genuinely unusual feature is that roads and water are handled by the Chemeketa Park Mutual Water Company, established in 1929, rather than by a municipal utility. That is a real practical difference from living in town, and anyone buying here should understand what it means for cost, maintenance responsibility and water reliability before they commit. It is also the sort of detail I make sure is disclosed properly when I represent a seller here.

The housing runs from original cabins through substantially rebuilt and modernized homes, on wooded parcels under redwood and oak. There is no condominium or townhome stock, no sidewalks and no flat walking loop, and that is the honest picture. For a client in their sixties who loves the quiet and drives comfortably, this can be a wonderful place to live. For someone in their eighties who has stopped driving at night, a mountain road, a steep driveway and a twenty five minute trip to a grocery store become a real constraint, and I would rather raise that early than pretend otherwise.

What you get in exchange is genuine seclusion, cool summers under the trees and a small community where people know each other. Downtown Los Gatos is a short drive down the hill for restaurants, the Los Gatos Public Library and the town’s senior services, and El Camino Health’s Los Gatos Hospital is the nearest emergency room. Santa Cruz and the coast are about the same distance in the other direction.

Schools in this part of the mountains are served by county area districts rather than by Los Gatos Union, and assignment depends on the specific parcel, so this is an address where I always check rather than assume.

Highway 17 is the only practical route in and out, which is worth thinking about seriously. It is a demanding road in rain and fog, it closes for accidents and slides, and winter storms occasionally cut mountain communities off for a period. Owners up here plan for that; newcomers sometimes do not.

On price, Los Gatos itself ran a median sale of about $2.7 million through the summer of 2026, but mountain properties trade on an entirely different basis, generally well below town prices, with values driven by access, sun exposure, septic and water, and the condition of the structure rather than by square footage alone. My Los Gatos home prices page covers the town market and the full Los Gatos area guide has more on the surrounding area, but for a mountain property I would want to look at genuinely comparable sales rather than a town median.

Selling a mountain home takes a different approach than selling in town, from how you handle inspections and disclosures to how you reach the specific buyer who actually wants this life. I have sold in these mountains for more than two decades. If you are weighing whether to stay up here or move down the hill, that is exactly the conversation I have with older adults and their families every week. Book a call with me for an honest assessment, or read about my selling process.