Oakland Geology

Grandview is a small, isolated Oakland neighborhood on the ridge above the Claremont Resort. I’m being unfair, I know, but this shot of a house on the north side encapsulates the neighborhood for me: a setting of intimate and exclusive comfort with borrowed scenery. It’s like all of Oakland’s neighborhoods on the east side of the Hayward fault, but with that invisible drop of ever-so-much-more-so. The views are grand, absolutely; beyond this house is Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve and behind me the vast panorama centered around the Golden Gate. All the houses are new, even raw, and oversized; sidewalks are absent, and no one would walk them anyway being too steep. There are no services, no amenities, no history. Only four outlet roads, all vulnerable to fire, landslide and earthquake. But it’s quiet and peaceful up here. With good provisioning, you could hold out OK after the next big quake in an incomparable setting, although service wouldn’t be restored for quite a while.

In my walk here last spring I saw only hints of bedrock, all mudstone of the Great Valley Complex.

This entry was posted on 31 July 2009 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Hayward fault, Oakland geology views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.