If you’ve ever driven south on Highway 17 from the Summit, you may have noticed an exit just past Inspiration Point for Glenwood Drive and another just a little further south for Glenwood Cutoff. If you estimated the size of a town based on the number of freeway exits it has, you might think Glenwood was a fairly sizable community. If you had been traveling by foot, buggy, horse, or train between 1880 and 1930, you would have indeed arrived at the lively town of Glenwood. After that time period, a stop in this stretch leads only to private bucolic neighborhoods. Today, if you listen very carefully, you might still hear a ghostly train whistle from the past carried in the westerly breeze. According to California Historical Landmark 449 located near Glenwood Drive and Eagle Road, the founding of Glenwood is credited to Charles C. Martin who homesteaded in the area in 1851. Before him a man named David Burns, identified as a bear trapper, lived there long enough to have Burns Creek named after him. Even earlier, the Parker and Bean families lived on the land and had respective creeks named after them. During this period, the area was known as Bean Hollow. A quote from the Santa Cruz Sentinel on November 25, 1917 sums up the location, “After them was named Bean Creek which flows through Mt. Herman and empties into Zayante Creek...The date was 1856 when only a horse trail connected Santa Cruz to Los Gatos via the mountains”. The same horse trail was originally a Native American footpath for nearly 10,000 years before any of the above-mentioned settlers arrived. The trail was also used by the Franciscan monks as they traveled between Santa Clara and Santa Cruz during Spanish rule.