A few years ago in this space I called Mountain View Cemetery “a manicured showcase of the lower Oakland hills.” While you’re visiting the dead, it is pleasant to lift your eyes to the hills and consider the living world.
The cemetery’s ground reflects its variety of bedrock geology, as shown on the geologic map.
The entrance area is young stream fill with a fringe of higher, older Pleistocene alluvium (Qpaf), then going outward and upward we have the Franciscan sandstone (Kfn) and then Franciscan melange (dark blue) with large enclaves of greenstone, or altered basalt (fg), and chert (fc) making up the highest hilltops. Their elevation corresponds with their resistance to erosion.
The result of this progression of materials is a concave hillslope, or a tilted natural amphitheater. And not only does that present clear sightlines to a range of landforms at a variety of distances, but the mountains of the Berkeley Hills also function as borrowed scenery beyond. All that is hard to gather into one photo, but we are all welcome to try.
“Mountain View” really should be spelled with two spaces between the words. The place is not just a view of mountains—although it is, to the east and across the bay to more mountains—it’s a mountain of views. Mountains and views. And Oakland has other examples all along its uplands.
Oakland Geology 
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