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Local farm and kids summer camp Hidden Villa is celebrating 100 years this year with an all-outs centennial celebration, which will run for the next year and commemorate its rich history in the community and as a cornerstone of kids’ lives who have attended the camp over the last century.
Hidden Villa, located in Los Altos Hills, kicked off the celebrations with its Sheep Shearing and Fiber Arts Festival on April 27, which Executive Director Elliot Wright said was a soft launch of its centennial celebrations this year.
To fully celebrate the 100-year anniversary, Jessica DuVal, Hidden Villa’s director of development and communications said that they are working on collecting stories from people who have had deep connections to the organization.
“We’re working on collecting all those stories to really culminate just the way that Hidden Villa’s touched so many lives,” she said. “We’re trying to really honor this milestone.”
A highlight of Hidden Villa has been its camps, which have been running for 79 years, and were the first “multicultural residential youth camp west of the Mississippi,” when they first started in 1945, Wright said. They also offer scholarships to families that would otherwise not be able to attend the summer camps.
“It’s a really big part of this, to knock down barriers of access for anyone who can join us and be here,” Wright said.
Hidden Villa offers a multitude of different camps, ranging from day camps that run Monday through Friday to a 50-mile hike all the way from the farm to the Pacific Ocean.
The organization was founded by Frank and Josephine Duveneck in 1924 when the couple purchased the 1,000-acre plot of land. Although the Duvenecks founded the organization, the land was already known as Hidden Villa. It has since grown to 1,600 acres and brings in around 30,000 visitors annually for summer camps, field trips and other programs.
Former camper and counselor Carolyn Chen recounted her experiences at Hidden Villa and with the Duvenecks, specifically Josephine, who she said was very caring to the campers. She would read all the campers stories, and even nursed Chen back to health when she came down with the flu at camp.
While going through letters and notes from her childhood at Hidden Villa, she told stories of her time at camp, which she said had changed immensely. She remembered venturing up the creek that runs through Hidden Villa by herself for hours, adding that she told the counselors and they just told her to be careful before letting her go.
“It was one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve had,” Chen said.
The camps have had issues in recent years, with the COVID-19 pandemic sidelining it in 2020, and more recently, in 2022, camp was canceled for the summer due to staff resignations over disagreements about potential hate symbols embedded on the exterior of a camp building. However, the last two years have had a large influx of campers, with around 700 campers enrolled this year.
As for the future of Hidden Villa, Wright said it’s an important way for campers to disconnect from technology and reconnect with nature, away from the pressures of school and life.
“What we’re trying to regain momentum around is the meaning of getting away from the busyness of life, or stepping into a different pace, going living on a farm, you know, getting your hands dirty,” he said.
September’s feast and celebration is only the beginning of Hidden Villa’s centennial celebration, as Wright said it is a yearlong event that will include many different events to commemorate the organization.