The Los Gatos Creek Trail Has Four Landlords, and This Is the Month You Notice

Most people who walk, run, or bike the Los Gatos Creek Trail talk about it like it's one continuous thing. Park at Oak Meadow, head south toward Lexington, or start at the Campbell end and ride north into San Jose. It reads as a single ribbon of pavement and dirt that just happens to run through town.

It isn't one thing. The trail is managed by four separate agencies, each with its own maintenance schedule, its own construction budget, and its own idea of when a project is finished. The Town of Los Gatos owns one stretch. Santa Clara County Parks owns another. Campbell and San Jose each hold a piece further north. None of them coordinate their calendars with the others, which means the trail's actual condition on any given Saturday has almost nothing to do with what you remember from last summer. Late August 2026 happens to be a month where that patchwork shows more clearly than usual, because a years-long problem just got permanently fixed in one spot while a routine seasonal service is about to shut down for the winter in another, and a maintenance issue is currently closing a third stretch outright.

The Trail Isn't One Thing

Here's the breakdown, if you've never had a reason to think about who actually owns the ground under your feet:

• Santa Clara County Parks manages the Los Gatos Creek County Park section, an urban stretch built around six percolation ponds near Dell Avenue in Campbell, plus Vasona Lake County Park itself.
• The Town of Los Gatos owns the segment through downtown, including the connection near Forbes Mill and the crossing at Highway 9.
• The City of Campbell maintains roughly three miles of paved trail, including a two-mile par course loop, from the Bascom Avenue underpass to the county park boundary.
• The City of San José holds the downtown reach near San Carlos Street, plus the portion of the western corridor that falls inside San José's own boundary before the trail continues on into Campbell and Los Gatos toward Lexington Dam.

The trail itself begins at Lexington Reservoir and follows Los Gatos Creek for nearly 9.5 miles through Los Gatos, Vasona Lake County Park, Los Gatos Creek County Park, and on into Campbell and San Jose. That's a long spine to expect four unrelated organizations to keep in identical condition at the same time. They don't, and this month is proof.

The Bridge That Finally Closed a Real Gap

For decades, the crossing at Highway 9 was the trail's weak link. Where the creek passed under the highway, the connection between the two sides was an informal dirt path, the kind of shortcut hikers and cyclists picked their way down because there wasn't a real alternative.

That changed with the Los Gatos Creek Trail to Highway 9 Trailhead Connector Project, a multi-year effort led by the Town of Los Gatos with a permit from Caltrans, since part of the work sits on Caltrans right-of-way. Contractor Granite Construction broke ground in October 2023, and the town held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 17, 2025, marking completion of a new prefabricated bridge over the creek along with switchback ramps connecting both sides of the highway to the trail. One longtime advocate for the project called the finished result "much more elaborate than I would have expected," a reaction that makes sense once you know what it replaced.

The practical difference matters more than the ceremony did. The old dirt path wasn't usable by anyone in a wheelchair, pushing a stroller, or riding a non-motorized scooter. The new bridge and ramps are. If you've avoided that stretch of trail because you remembered scrambling down a slope to get through, it's worth going back and seeing what's there now.

The Lake's Clock Is Already Running

While the Highway 9 fix is permanent, Vasona Lake's boating season is not, and late August is closer to its end than its beginning. LGS Recreation runs the boat rentals at Vasona Lake County Park, and Santa Clara County Parks lists the rental window as running from early spring through early fall. Kayaks, stand-up paddleboards, canoes, pedal boats, and sailboats are all available, with kids ages 0 to 12 required to wear a life jacket, which is provided with the rental.

If a weekend on the water has been sitting on your list all summer, the practical move is to stop treating it as something you can do "eventually" this year. Call ahead or check current hours before you make a plan around it, since the rental season doesn't run on a fixed calendar date and narrows as the weather turns.

The lake earns a full afternoon even without a boat. The Youth Science Institute sits at the park's north end, and behind it the Viola Anderson Native Plant Trail offers a quieter walk than the main loop. Vasona Lake itself holds black bass, crappie, catfish, and bluegill for anyone who'd rather fish than paddle. And next door, Oak Meadow Park keeps its own rhythm going. The Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad originates there and runs its miniature train through Vasona Lake County Park, a detail that makes the two parks feel more like one connected outing than two separate stops.

The One Stretch Not Cooperating Right Now

Not everything on the trail is opening up. Santa Clara County Parks' online closures list currently flags a portion of the Los Gatos Creek Trail as closed between the fishing dock area and the intersection nearest the Circle Group Area, due to a failed culvert, with a marked detour in place. If your usual route runs through that section, plan for the detour rather than finding out about it mid-walk.

Trail conditions on county-managed sections change often enough that the county maintains a dedicated hotline for it. Calling (408) 355-2200 and pressing 38 gets you the most current word on any closure, which beats relying on a sign that may or may not still be posted by the time you get there.

Where the Character Actually Changes

Part of why the trail feels inconsistent is that it genuinely is, block by block. Head south past downtown Los Gatos and the paved trail gives way to a wide dirt path near Lexington Reservoir, with a parking lot off Alma Bridge Road and creekside picnic views. Continue south from there and you can reach St. Joseph's Hill Open Space Preserve. Head north instead, past Vasona and toward the county-run section near Dell Avenue in Campbell, and you'll find the Los Gatos Creek dog park, an artificial turf area with shade, seating, and water. Dogs are welcome leashed along the entire corridor, and free disposable bags are available, but that particular fenced spot only exists at Los Gatos Creek County Park, not everywhere the trail passes.

None of this is a secret, exactly. It's just the kind of detail that only becomes visible once you stop assuming the trail behaves the same way from one end to the other.

The Next Few Weekends

If you're deciding how to spend the tail end of summer around here, the sequence that makes sense right now looks something like this: get to Vasona for a boat rental while the season is still running, walk the quieter Viola Anderson Native Plant Trail if you want to skip the crowds near the boathouse, let the kids catch the Wildcat Railroad or the carousel at Oak Meadow while you're already there, and save the Highway 9 crossing for the day you want to actually cover ground toward Campbell or downtown without doubling back. If your normal loop runs near the fishing dock or the Circle Group Area, call the trail hotline first.

None of this requires a new app or a membership. It just requires knowing that the trail under your feet has four different owners, and that late August is one of the months where their separate calendars line up in a way worth paying attention to.

If you're the kind of person who tracks these details because you've lived here a while and plan to keep doing so, that's exactly the sort of neighborhood knowledge Milestone Realty tries to put in front of people, whether you're settled in for the long haul or just starting to think about what comes next for your home. If a move to or within Los Gatos is somewhere on your horizon, reach out for a conversation or a free home valuation. We'd rather you have the real picture of this town than the version that shows up in a generic search result.