Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve is managed by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District in Santa Clara County, California. It's approximately 17,000 acres (69 km2) in area. The park features the Sierra Azul range's peaks of Mount Umunhum, Mount Thayer, and El Sombroso (with El Sombroso being the only publicly accessible peak) Trails connect from Lexington Reservoir on the western edge of the park, to Hicks Road on the eastern edge.
Parts of Sierra Azul are not yet open to the public, but many sections are, and these include miles of trails, old roads (some paved, some not), a manmade lake, Cherry Springs Lake, and other amenities. The terrain varies from wooded creek canyons to chaparral hills with views to open meadows.
Famous quotes containing the words open, space and/or preserve:
“I am Black because I come from the earth’s inside
now take my word for jewel in the open light.”
—Audre Lorde (b. 1934)
“With sturdy shoulders, space stands opposing all its weight to nothingness. Where space is, there is being.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy’s mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)