Alma, California: The Drowned Town Beneath Lexington Reservoir

Alma, California is a submerged ghost town in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Santa Clara County, just south of Los Gatos. In its prime it was a weekend retreat for San Franciscans who wanted to hunt grizzly bears, fish for trout, and stay in a quirky 2,500-acre estate called the Tevis Mansion.

01Why Was Alma Founded?

Alma began in 1871 as a stagecoach rest stop on the route connecting San Jose and Santa Cruz over the Santa Cruz Mountains. The location — in the narrow gulch along Los Gatos Creek — offered water, flat ground for horses, and trees for lumber. It was a natural stopping point for stage drivers and teamsters hauling goods between the Bay Area and the Monterey Bay coast.

The town grew into a small community: 200 residents at peak, with a stage stop, hotel, several saloons, a general merchandise store, and lumber mills cutting redwood from the surrounding Santa Cruz Mountains. Small agricultural operations filled out the economy.

02The Weekend Destination

By the late nineteenth century, Alma had become a rural retreat for wealthy San Franciscans seeking weekend adventure. The area offered grizzly bear hunting (California grizzlies would be extinct by 1924), trout fishing, and the general novelty of a rustic mountain town less than a day's train ride from the city. Alma was the kind of place San Francisco doctors brought their families for "mountain air" cures.

03The Tevis Mansion

Just outside town stood one of the strangest estates in California. Lloyd Tevis — a San Francisco financier and co-owner of Wells Fargo in the 1880s — purchased land near Alma intending to build a commercial trout farm. The trout farm failed. Instead of abandoning the project, Tevis and his heirs kept buying land. The estate grew from 49 acres to 2,500 acres.

At its peak, the Tevis Mansion featured a 40-room main house, an experimental farm, elaborate gardens planted with rare flowers from around the world, and a private water system sized for a small city. It was one of the most extravagant private estates in Santa Clara County — and most of it was abandoned or demolished long before the reservoir arrived.

04What Happened to Alma?

In the early 1950s, Santa Clara County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began planning the James J. Lenihan Dam to impound Los Gatos Creek. The goal was water supply and flood control for the growing San Jose region. The proposed reservoir pool included Alma.

The county bought out Alma's remaining residents in the early 1950s. Buildings were demolished or moved. The dam was completed in 1952 and the reservoir filled, inundating the townsite.

05What Remains of Alma Today

The town is underwater, usually beneath 30 to 50 feet of water in Lexington Reservoir. When water levels drop during extreme drought — such as summer 2008 when dam construction lowered the reservoir to 7% capacity — foundations, old roads, and a 1926 bridge become visible.

The road that circles Lexington Reservoir is still called Alma Bridge Road, preserving the town's name in Santa Clara County infrastructure. A Santa Clara County Parks interpretive sign at Miller Point describes the vanished town.

Lexington Reservoir is a popular recreation area with fishing, kayaking, and hiking on the surrounding Los Gatos Creek Trail. Bay Area hikers crossing the dam are looking down at the site of a 150-year-old mountain town that briefly housed one of California's most eccentric private estates.