Tucked away off the windy Bear Creek Road is a stable that’s been boarding horses for several decades.
A century-old barn stands on the Bear Creek Stables lot. Goats have played there. Chickens have laid eggs. Ponies have pranced.
But over the last few years, the future of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District land has been in question, with necessary improvements estimated in the $10 million range, and issues with the prior property manager, Chaparral County Corporation.
Now, Rick Parfitt of the nonprofit Friends of Bear Creek Stables wants to rely on lessons he learned in the technology world to revitalize the place.
He says he wants to apply new methods to maintain the site for boarders as well as the public.
Parfitt has been the president of the organization for the last two years, though he’s been associated with the group for 12.
It has a governing board of five, an advisory board of four and an army of 60 volunteers.
This registered nonprofit has been operating since 2013.
“May of 2024, Midpen had a board meeting and the general manager of Midpen said that they, Chaparral, shouldn’t take care of horse stables,” explains Parfitt.
Chaparral faced allegations of horse neglect in their Bay Area operations over the years, though it has said they offered their horses proper medical treatment, food, water and shelter.
Midpen voted to give Friends of Bear Creek Stables a short-term contract from June 6 to the end of this year.
Parfitt says they’re now responsible for cleaning the stables and feeding the horses, but they don’t contract with boarders at all directly.
(Faizi Samadani / Los Gatan)
Currently, there are 18 horses paying a board fee to Midpen (about $600 a month).
Parfitt hopes to secure a 12-year contract with Midpen this summer, with a goal of raising $250,000 to run and maintain the stables for two years until it becomes more sustainable.
He’s optimistic he’ll be able to do that by this fall.
They’ve already raised $92,000.
These initial funds will be used to develop their programs and subsidize operations until their income is sustainable, he says.
Trajectory
The horse stables are mainly used for boarders to house their animals.
However, Parfitt has a bigger vision for the place.
Over the next 12 years, he wants to see Bear Creek Stables become more available to the public.
And he wants people in the surrounding towns to be aware of this unique gem, too.
Though it’s in a transitional phase at the moment, Parfitt says eventually they’d like to have 72 horses on the site (with the nonprofit to own as many as 40).
And he imagines a horse camp in the summer where people would come for a five-week program.
This would be available to anyone that wants to learn about horsemanship.
There’d also be horseback riding lessons and even scheduled star gazing.
The best part? Some of these programs would be completely free.
Bear Creek Stables stretches out over 15 acres.
Parfitt says, to make this a reality, there needs to be certain rules in place.
When asked about the passion that comes to make this land more evolved and accessible, Parfitt goes into detail of his upbringing and career change.
He says he grew up next to an open space preserve.
‘I think it’s important that, when people dominate the environment, we can have an area into naure to remind ourselves of how we can be better people.’
—Rick Parfitt, president, Friends of Bear Creek Stables
“I was also a physicist and eventually transitioned into medical research,” he said.
The way he sees it, over the course of his lifetime, society has created a lot of beautiful inventions, but plenty of problems at the same time.
He believes this dichotomy has led society to need a reminder of what is important—basically places that allow for people to get away and connect with nature.
“My feeling about Silicon Valley is that there is so much interest in wealth generation that we lost our moral compass,” he said. “I think it’s really important that when humans dominate the environment, we can have an area into nature to remind ourselves of how we can be better people.”
To Parfitt, nature helps diminish the ego.
Friends of Bear Creek Stables wants to provide a space where groups can get together and talk about things outdoors—a destination.
After all, he says, Los Gatos is a “garden paradise.”
Parfitt wants to tap technology companies for the money it will take to support their project.
Some companies, like Google, Apple and Cisco have programs to match donations made by employees.
Parfitt says that these firms need their employees to have a place where they can travel to get away from work.
He’s hoping Midpen will give them the opportunity to make their horse hopes a reality.
