In the Los Gatos foothills, a hill estate once kept by America's first known openly gay couple — now public open space, still largely off-limits — will host a Pride volunteer event Friday. The land's history has only recently come back into focus.

In the oak woodland above Los Gatos, where Hendrys Creek runs past some two dozen natural springs in the Santa Cruz Mountains foothills, there is land that most Bay Area hikers cannot reach. Cathedral Oaks — now part of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District's Sierra Azul Preserve — remains closed to the public. But this Friday, June 26, a group of volunteers will work the ground there for a habitat restoration project the district is calling Pride in Our Preserves: yellow star thistle removal, 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

The occasion connects to what this land once was. Starting in 1910, Frank Ingerson and George Dennison, two artists and craftsmen who would remain partners for 55 years, built their home and studio on wooded acreage in these hills. NUMU, the Los Gatos history museum, has documented them as "the earliest known transparently common law gay couple in America." They ran an Arts & Crafts school on the property through the early 1910s, drew a circle of queer and creative visitors — among them soprano Lotte Lehmann and actresses Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine — and, per NUMU's research, sustained what became "a haven for the queer community and like-minded creative people who lived nearby or came from out of town to escape their public lives."

Dennison died in 1966 and Ingerson in 1968. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the main house; it was later demolished. Peninsula Open Space Trust acquired a 117-acre parcel for $1.5 million in 2011 and 2012, then transferred the land to Midpen. The Cathedral Oaks area has been off-limits to the public since. A December 2025 vote by Midpen's board authorized the Beatty Parking Area and Trail Connections Project — funded by the district's Measure AA bond — to eventually open the South Cathedral Oaks section. When that happens, what Ingerson and Dennison built here will be walkable terrain.

Ryan McCauley, a Midpen spokesperson, told KQED that the district's Pride programming is designed to "make sure we have equitable access to our preserves" and that Cathedral Oaks carries "a lot of history." Friday's volunteer event is among the only ways to be on the property right now.

Across the Bay, queer outdoor groups are claiming other familiar places this Pride month. Trailhead Gays, a San Francisco-based group founded by Gio Orantes, put on an Angel Island hike today, June 21, and has a daytime campout at Dolores Park set for June 28. Orantes, originally from Guatemala, described the group's purpose to KQED as offering members "a moment under the sun with people like them."

Friday's work party in the Cathedral Oaks hills doesn't promise that — there's no sunny lawn, no view of the Bay. It's a few hours on land that two men tended for five decades, a place whose history author Richard D. Mohr only recovered fully in a 2023 book, and a preserve that should eventually be open to anyone who wants to walk it.