POST Purchases 207-Acre Hillside Property Above Coyote Valley

Peninsula Open Space Trust Purchases 207-acre Hillside Property Above North Coyote Valley Conservation Area for Wildlife Habitat and Connections

PALO ALTO, Calif. (April 28, 2025) – Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) today announced the purchase of 207 acres along the northwestern ridge of Coyote Valley for $5.5 million. This conservation purchase will help preserve regional wildlife habitat connectivity and offers POST the opportunity to study the potential for recreational trail connections to nearby Calero and Santa Teresa County Parks.

The property is located near the intersection of Bailey Avenue and McKean Road in the eastern foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, west of the North Coyote Valley Conservation Area established by POST, the City of San José and the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority in 2019. With outstanding vistas of Coyote Valley from the top of the ridge, this property is home to a mix of habitat types across its diverse topography. A stream canyon empties into a pond on a neighboring property and serves as an essential water source for wildlife, providing habitat for birds, amphibians, reptiles and other animals.

POST’s acquisition of this property helps secure a critical wildlife corridor through Coyote Valley between two California mountain ranges—the coastal Santa Cruz Mountains and the inland Diablo Range.

“This property is a strategic link in the chain of protected lands across North Coyote Valley, connecting the Santa Cruz and Diablo Mountain ranges at a point where they are only one mile apart,” said Gordon Clark, president of POST. “In addition to providing landscape connectivity for species of all types, this property also helps connect Santa Clara County Park lands with the North Coyote Valley Conservation Area, which POST helped establish in 2019. Now that we own this key linkage property, POST and our partners will study the potential for a trail connection that is compatible with the needs of wildlife.”

The Conservation Vision

This property is a multi-benefit landscape, providing POST with an opportunity to protect it for wildlife connectivity and provide climate refuge for species migrating across the landscape. A mix of habitat types across the 207-acre property includes Serpentine Hardwood, Serpentine Grasslands, Blue Oak Woodlands, Annual Grasslands and California Bay. The property is within the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Plan’s serpentine fee zone, suggesting it may support rare serpentine-associated species. Varied topography, the presence of water and diverse habitats for numerous species may also provide refuge from climate change.

The Risks of Habitat Fragmentation

This property expands meaningful landscape connections and habitat for wildlife. Its protection reduces the fragmentation caused by development that divides the land into small, ineffective habitat patches for species. Studies have shown that fragmentation reduces wildlife populations by fundamentally changing their habitats and impeding their movement and access to food, water and mates. Coyote Valley is the last remaining undeveloped valley floor in the South Bay connecting the coastal Santa Cruz Mountains to the west and the Diablo Range to the east. Protecting connected lands decreases the risk of coastal mountain species becoming genetically isolated and, in time, at risk of extinction.

“Coyote Valley is truly a last-chance landscape for many species in our region,” said Marian Vernon, wildlife linkages program manager for POST. “We know from previous studies that this area is home to wide-ranging species like badgers and mountain lions that are so important to our regional biodiversity.”

Property History

This property is part of the ancestral lands of numerous Indigenous peoples, who stewarded the land for millennia and whose descendants, members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, still reside in the region. The property had previously been a dairy farm owned by W. E. “Dutch” Holthouse, who died in 1977. It has remained in the Holthouse family for three generations. The family once owned over 1,000 acres in this location but sold approximately 970 acres to IBM in 1975. That adjacent campus remains largely undeveloped, and Santa Clara County Parks holds a floating trail easement over that portion. The property purchased by POST is used primarily for cattle-grazing, which will continue for the foreseeable future.