For some reason, when Los Altos Hills was incorporated as a city in January of 1956, the border of the town at its most Northern point seemed to be an anomaly and did not follow what might have seemed to be a more natural division, based on the major features of the area. At the top center of the map below,,we see the border of Los Altos Hills (as it existed then and as it still exists today) near where Foothill Expressway intersects with Arastradero Road. Just North-East of this point of the map lie the Mesa Cemetery and Gunn High School - both within the City of Palo Akto. As you can see - the grey-colored Palo Alto territory seems to extend like a bite that has taken a chunk out of the yellow-colored area which is within the borders of Los Altos Hills

This seems anomalous to us looking at the map from a few thousand feet up because of the natural division lines presented by Arastradero on one edge of the corner, and Foothill Expressway on the other edge. But to anybody who knows the earlier history behind this chunk of territory, it seems even more anomalous because a large portion of this area was a single property owned (and subsequently subdivided) by "Manuela M. de Mesa" in 1898 as per the following map.

However, this map dates from long before the cities of Palo Alto and Los Altos were incorporated, thus the influence of this being a single sub-division was not readily apparent in afffecting how the borders were drawn. What is strange however, is that this area was not incorporated into either city initially - specifically when Los Altos Hills incorporated and established its initial boundaries, they excluded this chunk of what had once been part of the Mesa sub-division. It was only some three years later in January of 1959 that the Town Council of Los Altos Hills decided they wanted to annex this chunk into the city. Unfortunately, the process to initiate the annexation was spread over two meetings, and before the second meeting could take place to actualy initiate the annexation process, Palo Alto also decided it wanted to annex the area...