Lake Elsman

Burrell, California was an early settlement in Santa Cruz County near the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) south-southeast of Wrights. It was named for Lyman John Burrell, who settled there in the early 1850s. There was a Burrell School, which was later abandoned. A hotel was operated by James Richard Wright, whose son John Vincent Wright was honored by the naming of Wright's Station, which was more commonly known as Wrights.The settlement was located at latitude 370718N, longitude 1215547W; decimal degrees: latitude 37.12167, longitude -121.92972. The site is at the junction of Summit Road and Loma Prieta Avenue.Today, the site, including the restored historic school building, is home to the Burrell School Winery and Vineyards. David and Anne Moulton began development of the Estate vineyard in 1973. At a 1,600-foot (490 m) elevation, the site faces to the southwest. Soils are a complex mixture of loam and shale due to the close proximity to the San Andreas Fault. Initial plantings were to Chardonnay and Merlot, with Pinot Noir added in 2002. Cultivation and spraying are done with heritage Cletrac tractors; pruning, seasonal operations and picking are all done by hand.

Wrights, California (also known as Wrights Station) is a ghost town in unincorporated west Santa Clara County, California. It is located near Summit Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains, on the north bank of Los Gatos Creek, east of State Route 17.The National Weather Service maintained a cooperative weather station on the site of Wrights until May 31, 1986, which recorded rainfall and snowfall. The weather station was 1,600 feet (490 m) above sea level. The location is on the San Andreas Fault, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and it experienced considerable damage in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Geologists observed a lateral displacement of 4.6 feet (1.4 m) at Wrights.Wrights is one of a number of ghost towns in the Santa Cruz Mountains that flourished during the last half of the nineteenth century. Laurel, Wrights, Glenwood, and Clems declined when the Los Gatos-Santa Cruz railroad ceased operations in March 1940. Later in 1940, Patchen was bypassed and isolated by the construction of State Route 17; since the late 1960s it has been a Christmas tree ranch. Alma and Lexington were submerged in Lexington Reservoir in 1952, along State Route 17 above Los Gatos.

The Wrights Tunnel (also known as the Summit Tunnel, Tunnel 2, or Tunnel 1 after the daylighting of the Cats Canyon tunnel) is a railroad tunnel located in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties, California. Opened in 1880 after almost two years of construction involving numerous fatalities, the tunnel was at one point the longest tunnel in California and one the longest tunnels in the United States. It carried the tracks of the narrow gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad, which ran trains from San Francisco to Santa Cruz until the railroad was acquired by Southern Pacific Railroad, which upgraded the tracks to standard gauge and continued operating trains through the line and its tunnel until a major storm in 1940 washed out certain sections of the track in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After two years of no rail traffic on the line, Southern Pacific abandoned the line. Subsequently, the United States Army Corps of Engineers collapsed both portals with explosives, destroying the northern portal in the process. The interior of the tunnel remains intact along with the south portal, but the conditions of the interior are unknown, particularly since the tunnel crosses the San Andreas Fault and no person has entered the tunnel in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Mount Thayer is a mountain in the Santa Cruz mountain range located in Santa Clara County, California. The summit is in a section of the abandoned Almaden Air Force Station, about 1 mile west of Mount Umunhum. The elevation of the summit is at 3,479 feet (1,060 m) feet. An old derelict building, surrounded by telephone poles, is located on the summit. Mount Thayer, along with the surrounding property, is off limits to the public.

Laurel is a ghost town in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It is in a valley at an elevation of 900 feet (270 m) above sea level.

The Sierra Azul is a mountain range in Santa Clara County, California. It is the southern half of the Santa Cruz Mountains range, which is divided into two parts by California Highway 17 into what the colonizing Spanish called the Sierra Morena or "Brown Mountains" to the north and the Sierra Azul or "Blue Mountains" to the south. Part of the range is within the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. The highest peak is Mount Umunhum, the site of the former Almaden Air Force Station radar site and the current location of a NEXRAD weather radar of the National Weather Service which serves the San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Bay Area.

Mount Umunhum ( UH-mə-num) is a peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, located in Santa Clara County, California. It is the fourth-highest peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, after Loma Prieta, Crystal Peak, and Mt. Chual. Most of the mountain is located within the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve.

Patchen is a ghost town in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in Santa Clara County, California. It is located along the old Santa Cruz Highway.

Summit is a small unincorporated community more frequently referred to by locals as the Loma Prieta Community located partially in Santa Clara County but predominantly in Santa Cruz County, California, in the mountain ranges of the Santa Cruz Mountains. It lies at the summit along Highway 17 from which is gets its name. Home to a series of abandoned railroad towns and tunnels from the South Pacific Coast Railroad which operated until the 1940s, Public transportation by bus is also no longer available from the Summit Road area. VTA route 76 has been cancelled since June 2010, and the Highway 17 Express only stops in Scotts Valley. It is one of the few places in the San Francisco Bay Area to receive snowfall and the mountain pass which links the Silicon Valley and Monterey Bay is closed at this spot when snowfall is too heavy. The next town to the south is Scotts Valley and to the north Redwood Estates. The area serves as a rest stop with food for people traveling across the mountains. Before 1906, there were lakes in the area around Summit that locals used for recreation and fishing, but these lakes dried up after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake diverted their sources. The original road between Santa Cruz and Santa Clara Counties passed somewhat east of the current site of Summit, which came into being when California State Route 17 was constructed in the 1930s. Several businesses can be found in Summit today, most of them dating from the 1950s.Summit straddles the county line with Santa Clara County and is south of the unincorporated area of Lexington Hills with which it shares a zip code. The ZIP Code is 95033 and the community is inside area code 408.

Holy City is an unincorporated community in Santa Clara County, California. Once considered a Utopian community in the 1920s and 1930s, it is now considered a ghost town. The town is located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, off State Route 17 on Old Santa Cruz Highway. It is part of the Lexington Hills census designated place. Its ZIP code is 95026, and its area codes are 408 and 669.

Soquel Demonstration State Forest (SDSF or SDF) is one of eight Cal Fire-operated Demonstration State Forests totaling 71,000 acres. Collectively, the forests represent the most common forest types in California. The State Forests grow approximately 75 million board feet yearly and harvest an average of 30 million board feet of timber each year, enough to build 3,000 single-family homes. Revenue from these harvests funds a variety of the Department's Resource Management Programs. In addition, the forests provide research and demonstration projects on forest management, while providing public recreation opportunities, fish and wildlife habitat, and watershed protection.The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection (Board) policy provides that the State Forests shall be used for experimentation to determine the economic feasibility of artificial reforestation, and to demonstrate the productive and economic possibilities of good forest practices toward maintaining forest cropland in a productive condition. The management objectives and plans developed for each State Forest are subject to periodic review and approval by the Board.

Chemeketa Park is an unincorporated community of approximately 150 homes located in Lexington Hills, in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Santa Clara County, California, that is now effectively a rural neighborhood of Los Gatos, California. The postal designation for Chemeketa Park is "Los Gatos 95033", although it lies approximately five miles South of the official boundaries of the incorporated town of Los Gatos. The community is in area codes 408 and 669. Nearby communities are Redwood Estates, Aldercroft Heights, and the ghost town of Holy City. Chemeketa Park is accessed off of State Route 17, on Old Santa Cruz Highway along the Big Moody Curve.