BHR NEWSLETTER
Summer 2004 Issue
Paths of Least Resistance:
Secrets of the East Bay Hills
By William Rodarmor
In the East Bay Hills, the shortest distance between two streets is often a pathway. Because so many city streets run horizontally along the contour lines, the hills are crisscrossed by a network of pedestrian shortcuts that are historic, practical, and often beautiful.
Many of these pathways are well known, like Fountain Walk above Berkeley's Solano Tunnel, which links Sutter Street and the Marin Circle. Others are neighborhood kids’ secret routes, like the dirt trail that climbs from the top of Cedar Street to La Vereda Road. In Albany, the Castro Steps and Katherine Path lie east and south of the Albany Hill. Kensington has a scattering of appealing pedestrian shortcuts between Stratford, Coventry, and Ardmore roads.
Some pathways are strictly functional, like the one-block link between Oak Grove and Claremont avenues in Oakland. Others are quite pretty, like the group of paths off Alvarado Road that includes Willow Walk and Sunset Trail. And some pathways offer a near-wilderness experience within the city, like the lovely walk along Sausal Creek through Dimond Park in Oakland.
We Have Miles to Go
Berkeley has more than a hundred named pathways, which appear on Berkeley's Pathways, a map published in 2002 by the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association (BPWA). The pathways are numbered from 1 to 136, and are usually named for the original land developers. (Obvious exceptions include Scott Newhall Path, Bret Harte Path, and the plain-vanilla Short Cut, which connects Oxford and Walnut streets.) The half-mile-square area northeast of Cordonices Park is probably the most networked neighborhood this side of the Internet, with parts of at least 20 pathways
Not to be outdone, Oakland has catalogued some 200 walkways or off-street routes that provide shortcuts, particularly in the older neighborhoods. They are concentrated in the Upper Rockridge, Montclair, Trestle Glen, and Glenview areas, and along Glen Echo Creek, which runs from Mountain View Cemetery to Lake Merritt. They appear in the new edition of Walk Oakland!, a map and guide first published by the city in 2002.
One example of an off-street pathway is the Cleveland Cascade, a 250-foot-long ornamental stairway at the west end of Cleveland Street between Merritt and Lakeshore avenues. Dedicated in 1923, the stairway had a series of bowls once filled with water and lit by colored lights at night that seemed to “cascade” down the steep walkway. The water no longer runs, but the Cascade is still a beautiful and popular spot.
Made for Walking
Exploring pathways is like searching for treasure, because they are sometimes hidden and always rewarding. Some paths have concrete steps and railings, like Berkeley’s Martinez Path. Others are surprisingly wide, like Ardmore Path in Kensington. A number of historic pathways appear to have been absorbed by adjacent homeowners, such as Eagle Hill, also in Kensington, which is blocked by new landscaping.
In Berkeley, the two halves of Stevenson Path illustrate how much pathway conditions can vary. Climbing Upper Stevenson Path from Sterling Avenue to Miller Avenue takes you past well-tended gardens on sturdy wooden steps. The path boasts some fancy carpentry at the top, and BPWA volunteers have installed solid wood-tie steps at the bottom. By contrast, Lower Stevenson Path, which drops steeply from Sterling to Keeler Avenue, is hardly more than a deer track, passable in dry weather but probably a muddy slide in the rainy season.
"I love the paths, and I use them all the time," says Edward Defty, who has lived on Campus Drive in Berkeley since 1995. "They encourage people to walk, and the kids enjoy them." An ex-Navy A-6 carrier pilot, Defty travels at a slower pace these days, especially when walking his two small children along El Mirador Path or Redwood Terrace down to Euclid Avenue. "I think it's great that the planners had the foresight to develop the path system," says Defty. "It makes the urban environment more rural, and it shows people how beautiful this area is."
What's Old is New
We often think of paths as part of our kids’ geography, but that’s not necessarily true. “When I moved here in 1981, I became friendly with a lot of the older people in the neighborhood,” says Jack Lieberum, “and they used the paths all the time.” A former art dealer, Lieberum lives in a Sterling Avenue house built in 1922 and has a sense of history. His older, path-loving neighbors were a fascinating and distinguished bunch, he says. “It seemed like everybody you met had invented the discipline they were in.”
While the pathways are generally popular with young and old, not everybody likes them. Some homeowners resent having people walk by their property. Others come to believe over the years that the pathways belong to them, even though nearly all the historic ones were built on city rights-of-way. In a few cases, property owners have deliberately fenced the paths off.
Both Defty and Lieberum regret the loss of Berkeley’s Northgate Path, which once linked Quail Avenue and Shasta Road and gave easy access to La Loma Park. The uphill start of the path is easy to find — it’s at the end of Quail Avenue — and you can see the concrete steps leading down the hill. But someone has put a five-foot steel fence across the trailhead. The gate is only held in place with a few strands of rusty wire, but it looks as if the public hasn’t been able to use the trail for some time.
The pathway system is always changing, as old paths disappear and new ones are planned. Streams are a natural place for creekside walkways, and some people dream of turning the Santa Fe railroad right-of-way into a pathway system across Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, and into Richmond. In the meantime, the paths are convenient shortcuts, reminders of the area’s history, and small gifts of greenery. Writes the BPWA: “To the harried urban resident, the pathways offer leafy garden corridors of quiet, removed from the world of noise beyond.”
William Rodarmor is a writer, editor, and French translator in Berkeley, California.
