Oakland Geology

After introducing the Fan and its deep history, in this chapter I zoom in on a special corner of it for a closer look at a braided set of topics. Indian Gulch is the stream valley that today is better known as Trestle Glen. I single it out because it embodies several geological and social ideals:

Indian Gulch may well have been the Ohlones’ favorite neighborhood, and maybe we should be calling it Ohlone Vale. It had, and lost, chances to become a great city park. Although Indian Gulch has seen many changes and the stream in it has largely been culverted, geologically minded visitors can perceive despite all a stream valley with a soul.

I’ve posted a few times already about the valley’s geology, its lower reach and its upper reach. Briefly, it has the textbook dendritic, or treelike, pattern of a stream that has completely settled into the landscape, evident here as it curves across the bottom and up the right side of this map.

Like the ideal stream, its head is in high bedrock and its foot lies at sea level, grading from stony slopes to level beds of clay.

The Ohlones had a large village in this valley, and its traditional name recognizes how that memory lingered among the tribespeople, even generations later as they toiled for the Mexican ranchers of the Peralta family. Indian Gulch has supported a rock quarry, a brickyard, a hay farm and a stinky factory that processed eucalyptus leaves.

But from the 1890s through the 1910s, Indian Gulch was a battlefield between developers and City Beautiful visionaries. Researching this story in the old newspapers was fun, and my account is more detailed than any other I’ve seen.

Indian Gulch became “Trestle Glen” when an amusement park by that name opened in the spring of 1893, part of a real-estate scheme that extended an electric streetcar line across the valley on a tall wooden trestle.

^{Courtesy Oakland Library}

The streetcars were supposed to keep going into the Crocker Highland hills and serve a new development of fine homes, but the Panic of 1893, a deep depression that lasted four years, put the kibosh on that plan.

It was thirty years before developers moved in and built it out. During that time, four different attempts were made to preserve the picturesque valley, its grassy floodplain studded with large native trees. Proponents envisioned “a gem of a natural park” in Indian Gulch, while opponents called it “a rugged canyon of revolting appearance” and “a big ranch which we never can reasonably improve.” The bond issues needed to finance a proper park never passed, and the city leaders were divided. Instead, it was Lake Merritt that became the city’s dream park, full of diverse pleasures for the whole range of citizens.

I spend a few paragraphs indulging my own vision for what “Ohlone Vale Park” could have been after a century’s history, from gardens to rock-climbing preserves. “But stop the daydream. Oakland voters probably recognized that it takes a lot of work to civilize wild land—to improve a big ranch.” Instead, just a few outcrops peek out here and there to suggest what could have been.

The city and regional parks higher in the hills are closer to “natural parks,” a term I revisit in a later chapter.

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