A hostel with history in Los Altos

In 1924, Frank and Josephine Duveneck, a wealthy Palo Alto couple, saw a valley they liked in Los Altos Hills. So they bought it. Then they built and ran what would become the oldest operating hostel in the country. They preserved the local watershed by buying up the hills around it.

During World War II, they opened their doors to refugees from home and abroad. And after the war, they started a multicultural summer camp for kids that continues running to this day. It’s called Hidden Villa and includes an environmental education program and working farm. Reporter Audrey Dilling paid a visit to the camp to talk about its legacy with some of its original campers.

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AUDREY DILLING: Marc Sidel and Elizabeth Bowden-Smith are leading me and some former campers on a tour of the grounds. We’re walking through a meadow that looks like it could have inspired the setting of Bambi, if not for the herd of kids.

ELIZABETH BOWDEN-SMITH: I think it’s appropriate that we start our little walking history tour here at the sort of opening of the valley, the beautiful Hidden Villa.

Eager campers dart around a patch of dewy grass, awaiting instruction from their outnumbered counselors.

COUNSELOR: Where are the ants?

CAMPERS: In my pants.

Jean Gize is also on the tour today. She says not much has changed about the land since she participated in the first summer camp here in 1946. The smell has definitely stayed the same.

JEAN GIZE: It’s amazing, and I walk other places and I smell it and I think, “Duvenecks. Hidden Villa.”

Gize’s fond memories of the place actually begin before her first camp session – when she came to live with the Duvenecks under some special circumstances.

In 1942, when the U.S. ordered everyone with Japanese heritage to leave the west coast, Gize’s family, all citizens, had to leave, too. She and her mother moved to an internment camp in Utah. Her father volunteered to go fight the war.

GIZE: There was a lot of conflict in the camp because my father volunteered and there were people who were unhappy about that. People were angry. People were confused. But my mother said, “We’re Americans and we’re loyal.”

In 1944, just as people were being let out of the camps, Gize’s mother saw something in the local newspaper. Josephine Duveneck had posted an invitation to live and work at Hidden Villa to ease the transition back to normal life.

GIZE: So mom decided to go to the Duvenecks, accepted her invitation against the recommendation of many dear friends and her mother and her mother-in-law saying that, you know, you might be shot.

Gize and her mother boarded a late-night train back to the Bay Area. Gize was six, and she had no idea what was waiting for her at the end of the ride.

BOWDEN-SMITH: Good morning ladies. This is our mother daughter duo Cleopatra and Maisy.

MARC SIDEL: They say hello.

BOWDEN-SMITH: They produce wonderfully rich milk.

Hidden Villa was pretty much the exact opposite of where Gize and her mother had been living.

GIZE: Like you’ve got to realize in camp we had no eggs. Everything was powdered. Powdered milk, powdered eggs. When we came here and we had that rich cream...Could you imagine? After being in a dusty desert behind barbed wire to come to a place like this where there were eggs from chickens?

Our tour swings by a cozy, dim barn that’s home to some new chicks. Across from their pen is a larger coup with layer boxes built into the walls.

SIDEL: It’s just a wonderful experience to be able to open this up and take out a warm egg and pass it around and have the kids hold out their hands. Their eyes get really wide and they get quiet and careful.

Today, Hidden Villa sells the eggs at a local farmer’s market along with their organic produce. And they use the farm as a learning tool for campers and participants in an environmental education program that goes on during the school year.

But in Gize’s day, farm work was for adults. She spent her time here climbing trees, riding horses, and sometimes doing chores. In her memoir, Josephine Duveneck wrote that Gize blossomed at Hidden Villa, and Gize agrees.

GIZE: That was her observation. I went from this very withdrawn child to a very positive person, which I think I still am today.

Michael Hamilton also came to Hidden Villa in the late forties. Though he hadn’t met Gize before today, the two share some common memories. They recall a man named Julius Wall, who lived at Hidden Villa after escaping the Nazis.

And Hamilton was around for another significant visitor – Cesar Chavez.

MICHAEL HAMILTON: I think I saw him once. I didn’t remember meeting him. I may have shaken his hand, but I was more interested in horses.

Chavez’ presence is still remembered at Hidden Villa. Walking up a tree-lined path, we come across a counselor carrying proof.

SIDEL: Oh look, one of our baby goats.

CAMP COUNSELOR: This is Cesar.

SIDEL: Is that after Cesar Chavez?

COUNSELOR: I think so.

SIDEL: Cesar Chavez actually came out and did some organizing here. He organized the first farm workers strike and used Hidden Villa as a place, a safe haven to do some of that organizing.

COUNSELOR: That’s awesome.

Hidden Villa’s rich history informs the mission it strives for today – to teach respect for others and the natural world. Sidel says it’s the same thing the Duvenecks were going for back in their day.

SIDEL: It’s not like the problems have changed. We still have a lot of people that don’t respect each other. We have conflicts based on lack of understanding, lack of appreciation, lack of respect. And we have natural resources dwindling. And so those were problems then and those are problems that we’re gonna be tackling.

And until those problems go away, Hidden Villa will be here, taking them on one camper at a time. 

From Los Altos Hills, I’m Audrey Dilling.