El Cerrito's Wilderness Park Has Never Received the Love It Deserves

It could be El Cerrito’s greatest treasure. In fact, it is. But it remains largely undiscovered.

El Cerrito’s has some of the East Bay’s loveliest oak woodlands, a habitat once common but today endangered. There are free-flowing creeks, massive outcroppings of schist, groves of eucalyptus and various imported fir trees, and far too much invasive Scotch broom.

Trails attract hikers and dog-walkers and, on this coming Saturday, Aug. 20, the El Cerrito Historical Society, which is putting on a through the Hillside Nature Area. The hike requires reservations and is limited to 40; at last look, it was filling up fast. But future hikes are planned by El Cerrito Trail Trekkers.

From the flatlands looking west, the Nature Area makes up much of the city’s skyline. Many people use the trailhead that enters from Schmidt Lane, near the Recycling Center. Some even know about the trailheads on King Court, high above the recycling center, and from Regency Court, which lurks beneath Madera Elementary School.

Still, the Nature Area has never gotten the attention it deserves. Many of its entrances are unmarked. No official map of the entire park is readily available – which means it’s difficult for even frequent park users to comprehend the area’s precise borders.

A map showing a nature trail, which was installed by the Scouts decades ago, is only sporadically available at the Schmidt entrance.

Even the size of the park is at issue. The city website says it’s 79 acres; many media reports and city documents have put the size at 140-plus acres, perhaps by including private land and EBMUD sites that are commonly used by hikers, as well as the city-owned recycling center and corporation yard.

The very layout of the Nature Area is confusing. It’s split between two sections, a large southern area that’s bordered very roughly by Moeser Lane to the south and Wildwood Place and Douglas Drive to the north, and a small northern section just north of Potrero Drive.

To hike from the southern to northern sections requires hikers to exit one poorly marked trailhead on Douglas, cross Potrero, and head up an easy grassland trail. The reward includes magnificent views of cityscape and the Bay.

Adding confusion to the picture are several other large undeveloped areas that border the official Hillside Nature Area but are not part of it. These include PG&E land south of the park, with a line of awe-inspiring power lines. This rock-strewn, grassy land, much appreciated by deer and dog-walkers, stretches to Moeser.

And just north of Hillside Area North is a 15-acre parcel, known over the years by various names of its owners, including “Willis,” that includes a lovely creek and several often-used trails.

The history of the Hillside Nature Area remains somewhat cloudy. Much of it came to the city by way of donations from Forest Brown, the last president of the city’s historic Brown and Hutchinson Quarry, in the late 1940s, when the quarry closed, or the early 1950s.

The quarry, whose remains can be admired in the huge cut at the end of Schmidt, behind the recycling center, was founded circa 1900. The foundations of a building that once housed quarry workers can still be spotted across from Portola Middle School, by the trailhead to the PG&E trail.

Much of the remaining land came to the city from developers who deemed it too steep and/or slide-prone for housing.

Over the years the city has done a good job of caring for the park. The main trails are well-maintained, the Fire Department installed numerous mini-hydrants, and contractors and volunteers cut firebreaks.

But the city has never quite adopted the park as the natural historical centerpiece of the town that it could be. In fact, as the city’s former, longtime community services director, Joel Witherell, told a reporter in 1990, several times it tried to give the land away to the East Bay Regional Park District – which expressed no interest in taking it.

Much of the care and improvements the park has received over the years has come from volunteers.

Volunteers have improved trails, removed invasive species (the city’s Green Teams, under the auspices of the Environmental Quality Committee, and Friends of Five Creeks do this regularly), planted native vegetation, and picked up trash.

Volunteers have planted the Memorial Grove at the park’s entrance on Schmidt, planting and maintaining trees that celebrate some of the city’s movers and shakers, both living and dead.

Less attention in recent years has been given to a second memorial grove, dedicated to former city manager Ken Smith, an “excellent city manager, a very quiet, gentle man,” according to his former colleague, Rich Bartke, a former mayor and current president of the El Cerrito Historical Society.

Smith, who was city manager in the 1950s and early 1960s, spearheaded efforts to build most of the parks that serve the city today.

His grove is unmarked.

But the best illustration, or the worst, of the city’s benign neglect is its failure to follow through on any of the several suggestions made over the years by consultants, city staff, and elected officials, for improvements that would make the Hillside Nature Area a better place for hikers – and for wildlife as well.

Back in the mid-1970s, for example, a consultant helping update the city’s general plan, which guides land-use and development, suggested creating a network of trails both within the park, and connecting to trails outside the park.

Those suggestions have never been implemented. El Cerrito Trail Trekkers, a recently formed group that advocates for trails, came up with many of the same ideas on their own, before reading J.A. Bassham’s 1974 report.

“At present,” Bassham wrote, “trails in the south portion of the park and a short trail in the north section provide some pleasant routes for hikers. However, access from some directions, suitable links between northern and southern sections of the park and loop routes (where the hiker doesn’t have to retrace his steps) are limited. These limitation can be removed by building the BART and Wildcat Canyon Trail and by constructing other trails.”

What “BART and Wildcat Canyon Trail” is he talking about?

It was a trail planned by the city, finally approved in 1976 – but never built. As described by the El Cerrito Journal in April 1976, the $6,000 Del Norte Trail would have stretched from the El Cerrito del Norte BART station through Canyon Trail Park, into the Hillside Natural Area, then into Arlington Park and over the hill connecting to Wildcat Canyon Regional Park.

“The BART to Wildcat Canyon Trail through Hillside Park will become an important link in extended round trip hikes,” Bassham wrote, “in which BART is used by the hikers to return to the starting point.”

Bassham also suggested building trails through land that was privately owned then, and remains privately owned today, to connect publicly owned open space – suggestions which Trail Trekkers independently came up with as well.

“Some use is needed of privately owned property…,” Bassham wrote, “if the full potential of the park is to be realized.”

Portions of the 15-acre Willis parcel north of the Hillside Nature could be dedicated by the landowner for a trail, Bassham suggested.

If a trail were built along the upper reaches of that property, and if connections between the northern and southern sections of Hillside Nature Area could be clarified (simple signage would help), then local hikers could walk a mile-and-a-half-long route from the trailhead at Schmidt Lane to Fairview Drive and Tamalpais Avenue, leaving wildland only briefly to cross Potrero Avenue.

Bassham also focused on an area between Madera Circle and Madera School and the Hillside Nature Area South. “There is need for a hiking right-of-way here to the northeast corner of Hillside Park.”

Among the mysteries of the Hillside Nature Area, this is one of the most mysterious. A well-designed, well-maintained Stairway to Nowhere descends from Madera Circle in a stately manner to a bit of creek and some brush. The site is on private land, about two block’s length from the Hillside Nature Area.

Were these steps intended as part of a trail linking to the park? Very likely. It would be wonderful to see that built.

Dave Weinstein is chairman of El Cerrito Trail Trekkers and vice president of the El Cerrito Historical Society.

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly said a hike in the Hillside Nature Area organized by the El Cerrito Historical Society is occurring this coming Sunday. It is happening Saturday, Aug. 20.