The Alhambra Hills - A Necklace Of Natural Beauty In Our Back Yard

The U.S. Census Bureau named the Greater Bay Area as the second most densely populated urban area in America, with an average 6,266 people per square mile.  That’s second only to Los Angeles with just under 7,000.  Now in all fairness to Martinez, we’re a few miles out of the “urbanized area” used in these findings, which extends from Hercules to Fremont in the East Bay, but we’re darned close.  In spite of the urban congestion, however, the Bay Area has a legacy of park land preservation that goes back to our own most famous resident, John Muir, and his championing of America’s National Parks, one of our enduring legacies to the world.

That spirit was strong enough in the Bay Area that the East Bay Regional Park District has grown from a few Depression Era parks into the largest Regional Park District in the country.  With the advent of Land Trusts like Save the Redwoods, Save Mount Diablo, the Muir Heritage Land Trust and a number of others, and cities willing to create their own open space preserves, the Bay Area is probably the most parkland rich urban area as well.   That’s the accomplishment of many who cared enough to fight the kind of uncontrolled sprawl that defines Los Angeles today.   Our population in the Bay Area continues to grow, and the need for places to get outside hasn’t diminished.

We’ve lost our agricultural lands, the flat valley bottoms, to houses, but we’ve managed to preserve many of our hills as parks contiguous to the densely populated cities.  It was only a few years ago that proposals for building hundreds of homes along the Franklin Hills from Highway 4 to the Carquinez Straits, paralleling Alhambra Avenue, were seen as forgone conclusions.   Homes on Mount Wanda and all across Sky Ranch and the Fernandez property were only a matter of time.  But in each of these cases, Martinez citizens stood up and in the best Bay Area tradition said “No, there’s a better use for that land.” 

They had bake sales and fund raisers, passed bonds and even started a land trust to make it all happen.  Now those lands are open to the public for hiking, biking, picnicking or just looking at, providing the marvelous view sheds we enjoy every time we look up when we’re outside. 

There was one large parcel, studded with heritage oaks, grasslands and ravines, already slated for development that got left behind when those others were saved, the Alhambra Hills.  It is the area bordered by Alhambra Valley and Reliez Valley Roads on the south and west and Alhambra Avenue on the east.  Little subdivisions and individual homes nestle in the lowlands, but the ridge itself is still used for cattle ranching.  At present it is a beautiful forested hill that we’ve looked at for so many years few of us even know that it’s slated to be turned into one of the last visually prominent, ridgetop housing developments in Martinez. 

The downturn in home building has given a respite to what appeared to be imminent development several years ago.  In that breathing space a few folks in town started thinking of an alternative to the proposed 110 homes ranging up to 10,000 square feet in size, and started the Alhambra Hills Open Space Committee to explore the possibility of raising the funds to buy the property.  Tim Platt, Gay Gerlach, Hal Olson and many others, have been working now for several years and interest has grown.  Take a photographic tour of the land on their web site and you’ll see property worth preserving.  The Martinez News-Gazette published a great article on their efforts recently. 

Back in the 1980s, when the environmental action committee Friends of the Franklin Hills was actively working to save the Franklin Hills, and the Muir Heritage Land Trust was engaged in its first land acquisition, the Sky Ranch, the Alhambra Hills had two issues that we thought were insurmountable.  These were that it had previously been zoned residential, and that it was surrounded by homes already and could not be connected to any other large open space parcels or parks.  Given the downturn in home building, the first issue may be moot if the developers decide to cut their losses and sell and it appears they may be willing to do this.  

That second issue appeared unresolvable until just this year, when Jamie Fox, a young electrical engineer who moved to Martinez in 2006, began looking at aerial maps and studying the California Protected Areas Database -- CPAD -- a geographic information system inventory of all protected park and open space lands in California. 

He started to see connections.  Sometimes little corridors and rights of way that could provide access to what we had all seen as an isolated hill.  By exploring on foot he discovered that larger open space parcels were in fact quite close as well.  Mt. Wanda, which hadn’t existed as a park in the 1980s, is only a short walk away, and the Paso Nogal and Ridgeview Open Spaces in Pleasant Hill provide lovely trails that could be directed to the south end of the Alhambra Hills.  I don’t know if these existed in the 1980s either. 

Sometimes it takes a view from the outside to see what’s right in front of us.  Jamie seems to have that new vision.  He was raised in Auburn where there is abundant open space, but most of it is private.  There are a few trails in the foothills, but he’s been amazed at the trail riches he’s found in the Bay Area, and has jumped in with both feet to see that we keep adding to them.  He came to the Bay Area for a job and has become the designer of the electrical system for San Francisco’s current expansion of the Museum of Modern Art as well as for the new Stanford concert hall which he says will be one of the most acoustically sophisticated in the country when it’s finished. 

He envisions the Alhambra Hills as providing a green corridor connecting the Bay Ridge Trail, which traverses Mt. Wanda and the Franklin Hills, with the Canal and Iron Horse Trails that already connect to Briones Regional Park and Mt. Diablo and all its surrounding parks and city open spaces.   That’s a grand vision and one that could become reality if we really want it and go after it as a community.   

Several weeks ago, Jamie took Igor Skaredoff and I on a hike beginning at the Canal Trail near Morello and Taylor Boulevard.  We hiked over the hills through Paso Nogal and the Ridgeview Open Spaces, areas I’d never walked before.  I was surprised to find them forested and beautiful.  We walked only a block or two of suburban sidewalks in the whole distance, ending at a spot overlooking the south side of the Alhambra Hills.  Igor is one of the founders of the Friends of Alhambra Creek, and has been involved in land use and park issues in our area for many years.  On that hike, we both started to see the connections that Jamie proposed as real possibilities.  Igor likened it to a necklace of parks and open spaces extending into the suburban areas yet connected by corridors and trails that tied them together for the hiker or biker who wanted to go the distance. 

On another day this past week I took a second walk with Jamie along Wanda Way and Alhambra Valley Road and I saw that the connections are almost there already for a pedestrian link from the west side of the Alhambra Hills to the south end of Mt. Wanda and the Bay Ridge Trail.

Maybe it’s working with electrical grids and schematics, which are just pathways for electrons after all, that has made this come together for Jamie, or maybe it’s his love of hills and trails.  What was seen as an impediment to us twenty-five years ago, the homes surrounding the Alhambra Hills, may be the very reason for saving the property.  Jamie’s vision would put public open space in such proximity to our urban lives, that taking a walk in the woods doesn’t involve driving anywhere.  Simply step out your door and walk a block to find a trail.  That’s a vision worthy of Mr. Muir himself.  The Alhambra Hills are one of the last undeveloped large ridges in Martinez, and worth protecting. 

Other Trail News

With only a few days to go before I take off for the Southwest and an attempt to hike the Continental Divide Trail, I managed to get in one final training hike on Mt. Diablo last Wednesday with friends.  The rains were called off for the day and blue sky and scudding clouds accented the green beyond green that was going on atop that mountain.  Every deciduous oak, the blues and blacks and valleys, were covered in new leaves, each a different shade of green, translucent in the sun.  Backlit, the grass above the Northgate Road was absolutely chartreuse.  Studded with poppies, lupin, popcorn flower, fiddlehead, fillaree, ceanothus, chaparral daisies, wallflowers and buttercups, it is simply not to be missed.

This is the time of year to visit Diablo.  For flowers, park at Juniper Camp and hike out Deer Flat Rd. at the back of the campground.  This is the warmer, south side of the mountain and the first place to bloom.  Go as far as you dare, remembering you’ve got to hike back up to Juniper.  In the afternoon, the sun slanting through all those colors is magical and the green, beyond belief.  Red-tail hawks soared above and the first ground squirrels popped heads above their burrows, just daring those red-tails to attack.  The mountain is at its best right now, and so are you, especially when you’re outside on a grassy hill surrounded by flowers.


"Everybody needs beauty...places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul alike."
— John Muir