Monte Sereno chose quiet hills over a town center

Monte Sereno is unusual because it did not grow around a busy downtown or old crossroads. The city started as a rural agricultural area in the early 1900s, with ranch houses, orchards, dairies, livestock, summer homes, and a few large estates along the lower Santa Cruz Mountains.

That early pattern still matters. Monte Sereno never developed a commercial core, and the city remains mostly residential. When nearby cities were growing, residents chose incorporation in 1957 as a way to avoid annexation and keep local control over the area’s quieter way of life. Thomas B. Inglis, the city’s first mayor, helped lead that effort and served from 1957 to 1967.

The small size hides some interesting cultural history. John Steinbeck lived in Monte Sereno from 1936 to 1938, in a home on Greenwood Drive. During that time, he wrote “The Grapes of Wrath” and finished a draft of “Of Mice and Men.” The city also notes that Charlie Chaplin and Burgess Meredith visited him there.

Then there is Billy Jones. Jones was a railroad engineer who settled in Monte Sereno and built a miniature steam railway in his yard, known as the Wildcat Railroad. Walt Disney visited it. After Jones died, local residents formed a nonprofit to move and preserve the railroad at Oak Meadow and Vasona parks, where families still know the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad name.

Monte Sereno’s story is not loud, and that is the point. The place chose quiet residential hills, but it still carries a literary chapter, a backyard railroad chapter, and a cityhood story built around keeping its own shape.