Private Jet to Los Altos Hills

Decades before the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area became home to the world’s largest tech companies and earned its Silicon Valley nickname, wealthy San Francisco residents began spending weekend getaways, building summer estates and cottages among the region’s bucolic fruit groves.

Millions of fruit trees grew there in the mid-1900s. Their beautiful, sweet-smelling blossoms gave the region the nickname, Valley of Heart’s Delight. It was so beautiful that trains and tour buses brought visitors to Los Altos Hills and the rest of the Santa Clara Valley to see it.

Today, the town of 8,000 – many of which are Silicon Valley executives -- with views of the Santa Cruz Mountains is one of only five towns in the United States where more than half the homes for sale cost more than $2 million. The median home price is $7,755,000.

Los Altos Hills, the third wealthiest town in the country, is not to be confused with Los Altos. Los Altos Hills has no post office or library. Los Altos delivers its mail. Commercial zones are banned. It has two retail stores, a bookstore at Foothills College and a gift shop run by the cloistered nuns at the Poor Clare Colettines of Immaculate Heart Monastery. Instead of sidewalks along Los Altos Hills’ narrow and winding streets, there is a pathway system, some 80 miles of trails and off-road paths that meander around and connect almost all parts of town for walkers, bicyclists, runners and horseback riders.

Los Altos Hills, which is nine square miles of land situated on a group of small hills atop the Altamont and Monte Vista faults, seems worlds away but it is a mere 35 miles south of San Francisco, 15 miles north of San Jose, four miles south of Stanford University, five miles southwest of Google headquarters in Mountain View and 10 miles south of Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto.