In Summer 2019, Richard and Ellen Lowenthal donated an old haul road to the city of Cupertino to turn into a trail. It’s a wide dirt path, lined with trees and bushes on one side with a steep drop down to the Deep Cliff golf course, and backyards of homes on the other. It stretches about a mile long from Linda Vista Park to McClellan Ranch Preserve and has been lying unused and locked away behind gates for years. The city accepted the donation last year. In Oct 2020, the city plans to start getting the Linda Vista trail ready for resident use.

The trail will give the residents around Linda Vista Park a scenic, green trail connection to McClellan Rd and McClellan Ranch Preserve, opening up great walking and biking opportunities right outside their front doors.

Most residents whose backyards back to the Linda Vista trail are supportive of the new trail, though they are understandingly concerned about their security and privacy. One of the residents wrote in a letter to the city council: “In general, we wholly support the development of this potentially great asset to our immediate community, as it will encourage a healthy lifestyle, get people out of their cars and make our neighborhood even safer. Our concern is primarily about maintaining our privacy and personal security and trust that design and implementation will maintain or improve those issues with the new trail. We trust that the implementation process will keep us up to date and include us in the feedback process to accommodate any safety and property concerns that we have. Thank you for having the vision and foresight to invest in our community and neighborhoods.”

The city has expressed their commitment to working with the residents who live along the trail to address their security and privacy concerns. We’ll keep you updated as the city develops specific plans for the trail.