After introducing the Fan and its deep historical past, on this chapter I zoom in on a particular nook of it for a more in-depth take a look at a braided set of subjects. Indian Gulch is the stream valley that in the present day is best generally known as Trestle Glen. I single it out as a result of it embodies a number of geological and social beliefs:
Indian Gulch could nicely have been the Ohlones’ favourite neighborhood, and perhaps we must be calling it Ohlone Vale. It had, and misplaced, possibilities to change into an ideal metropolis park. Though Indian Gulch has seen many modifications and the stream in it has largely been culverted, geologically minded guests can understand regardless of all a stream valley with a soul.
I’ve posted just a few occasions already concerning the valley’s geology, its decrease attain and its higher attain. Briefly, it has the textbook dendritic, or treelike, sample of a stream that has fully settled into the panorama, evident right here because it curves throughout the underside and up the fitting facet of this map.
Like the best stream, its head is in excessive bedrock and its foot lies at sea stage, grading from stony slopes to stage beds of clay.
The Ohlones had a big village on this valley, and its conventional identify acknowledges how that reminiscence lingered among the many tribespeople, even generations later as they toiled for the Mexican ranchers of the Peralta household. Indian Gulch has supported a rock quarry, a brickyard, a hay farm and a smelly manufacturing unit that processed eucalyptus leaves.
However from the Eighteen Nineties by the 1910s, Indian Gulch was a battlefield between builders and Metropolis Stunning visionaries. Researching this story within the outdated newspapers was enjoyable, and my account is extra detailed than some other I’ve seen.
Indian Gulch grew to become “Trestle Glen” when an amusement park by that identify opened within the spring of 1893, a part of a real-estate scheme that prolonged an electrical streetcar line throughout the valley on a tall picket trestle.
Courtesy Oakland Library
The streetcars had been supposed to maintain going into the Crocker Highland hills and serve a brand new improvement of positive houses, however the Panic of 1893, a deep despair that lasted 4 years, put the kibosh on that plan.
It was thirty years earlier than builders moved in and constructed it out. Throughout that point, 4 completely different makes an attempt had been made to protect the picturesque valley, its grassy floodplain studded with massive native bushes. Proponents envisioned “a gem of a pure park” in Indian Gulch, whereas opponents known as it “a rugged canyon of revolting look” and “a giant ranch which we by no means can moderately enhance.” The bond points wanted to finance a correct park by no means handed, and town leaders had been divided. As an alternative, it was Lake Merritt that grew to become town’s dream park, filled with various pleasures for the entire vary of residents.
I spend just a few paragraphs indulging my very own imaginative and prescient for what “Ohlone Vale Park” may have been after a century’s historical past, from gardens to rock-climbing preserves. “However cease the daydream. Oakland voters most likely acknowledged that it takes numerous work to civilize wild land—to enhance a giant ranch.” As an alternative, just some outcrops peek out right here and there to counsel what may have been.
The town and regional parks greater within the hills are nearer to “pure parks,” a time period I revisit in a later chapter.
