Cuesta Park, Mountain View

Cuesta Park is really the heart of Mountain View for me. This is where you will find everything from El Camino Hospital to some of the classic older homes of Mountain View.

Let’s start with the hospital. With more than 2000 workers, El Camino Hospital is Mountain View’s third top employer behind internet giants, Symantec and Google. From its renowned Cancer Center and Heart and Vascular Institute to its nurse training program and its full complement of health care services, El Camino is certainly one of the best hospitals in the Bay Area. But its influence in Mountain View and the surrounding area extends beyond the hospital grounds. El Camino does a fair amount of community outreach offering programs like free lectures, new mother mentoring programs and its fairly well-known “Day of Dance”. These programs help integrate parts of the surrounding community with the hospital’s mission, and contribute to the general health and well-being of the Mountain View populace.

Just to the north of El Camino Hospital is Cuesta Park and its offering of recreational areas. Cuesta Park is probably the best park at the heart of Mountain View. It is a fairly large area with lots of grass for laying around reading or perhaps having a nice picnic (though I haven’t seen much of this), and there is a nice play area for kids, trails for nice walks and a soccer field.

Adjacent to Cuesta Field are the tennis courts of Mountain View Tennis—whose half dozen courts are the location for the beginning and intermediate classes that help foster the sport in Mountain View.

But the location is not just about health of the body. The Cuesta Park neighborhood is also about the health of the mind and spirit. With St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church on Cuesta Drive (my brother’s church) and St. Francis High School just to the west of El Camino Hospital you will find a fair amount of spiritual guidance here as well. When it comes to St. Francis High School, it is one of the best Catholic high schools in the Bay Area, offering a college-like atmosphere that focuses on academic rigor, character education, and also has strong athletics programs (go Lancers!). Though Mountain View hardly needs an alternative to their public schools, St. Francis is definitely the private alternative for those that want to avoid sending their kids to public schools.

North of Cuesta Drive, the Cuesta Park neighborhood is largely a residential neighborhood made up of older nicely kept Ranch homes, with some newer nicely kept condominiums on the far northern end by El Camino Real.

What does it cost to live in Cuesta Park?

This is one of those hyper stable neighborhoods where few houses come on the market at one time, but from what I’ve noticed it is a lot like many of the other highly desirable neighborhoods in Mountain View. Currently, for example there is a small 1200 foot Ranch home dating, of course, to the 50’s which will run you just shy of $1 million.

Not the most of affordable of neighborhoods, but my favorite in Mountain View.