Chitactac-Adams Heritage County Park

Chitactac-Adams Heritage County Park preserves the site of Chitactac, a Mutsun Ohlone village whose name is thought to mean "big dance place," inhabited for an estimated 3,000 years before its people were taken to the Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista missions by 1800. The park's rock outcrops still hold real petroglyphs and bedrock mortars the Ohlone used to grind acorns — tangible evidence of daily life here, not a mystery. A schoolhouse later stood on part of the property (the last one burned down in 1956) before the land became a Santa Clara County park. Local legend holds that the site's parking lot sits atop an Indigenous burial ground, with drivers reporting their car's air conditioning switching on by itself at night.