Taking Refuge
At this small, sandy National Wildlife Refuge on the industrial outskirts of Antioch, you'll find great views of the San Joaquin River, and rare plants and insects that don't exist anywhere else.
Geology
Serpentine Splendor
Tucked into less than a square mile of land next to a freeway, the Peninsula's Edgewood Park is a showcase for stunning wildflower diversity, all the result of our region's unique geology.
Book Review: A Dangerous Place
by Marc Reisner, Pantheon Books, 2003, 181 pages, $22. Â Don’t let the hyperinflated housing market fool you. The Bay Area is sit-uated atop some of the most seismically unappealing real estate in the world. In fact, the nine-county region … Read more
Above Silicon Valley, Black Mountain’s Rich Natural History
Montebello Open Space Preserve in Los Altos Hills. Trail: 5.5 mi, 1,092 ft elevation gain, loop
The Fire Down Below
A shower of magma-heated liquid and steam makes for more than just a pretty Calistoga postcard. It's a 30-million-year-old lesson in California's dynamic underground history of sliding plates, volcanic eruptions, and molten rock.
What, and where, are the oldest rocks in the Bay Area?
A: The oldest rocks in the Bay Area are metamorphic rocks associated with the granitic rocks at Point Reyes, Bodega Head, and Montara Mountain. They have traveled a long way in space and time to get here. They all occur … Read more
Postcards from Pescadero
True, there was no e-mail, snail mail, or even Pony Express, but somehow postcards from intrepid explorers of the San Mateo coast in days of yore have reached our mailbox. Take a unique trip through time and discover how the beach and marsh at Pescadero came to be the treasures we love to visit today.
Edgewood Preserve
One of the best places to experience a slice of Bay Area landscape as it might have looked before European settlement is San Mateo’s Edgewood County Park and Preserve. Offering a wide diversity of ecological zones, Edgewood is home to … Read more
Legacy of the Red Ore
Numerous animals make their homes in burrows in the hills of this Santa Clara County park, but none dig as deep as the miners who hauled mercury-laden ore out of the ground for 125 years.
The Vale of Tesla
Nestled in the hills southeast of Livermore, at the border between the San Joaquin Valley and the Bay Area, the old Tesla Mine townsite in Corral Hollow sustains a vibrant mix of inner south coast range plants and animals along with the traces of a rich human history. But a state proposal to create an off-road vehicle park in the hollow threatens to reopen old scars on this tranquil landscape.
