About El Sobrante

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Surrounded by Richmond, San Pablo, Pinole, and public parklands, El Sobrante is a small, unincorporated semirural valley community of about 12,000 residents. The original boundaries of El Sobrante contained all of the private land in Sobrante Valley. Over the years, both Richmond and Pinole have colluded with County officials and developers to annex significant adjacent sections of El Sobrante in order to increase their tax base, in exchange for "making a deal" with the developers. Therefore, many Sobrante Valley residents now have Pinole or Richmond property tax bills and postal addresses. However, their residence in Sobrante Valley is disclosed by their 94803 zip code, which was assigned to the valley area.

Geographically, El Sobrante lies west of the San Pablo Reservoir parkland, and is flanked by San Pablo Ridge to the southwest and Sobrante Ridge to the northeast. San Pablo Dam Road and San Pablo Creek run side by side down the valley floor. Appian Way, May Road, Valley View Road, and Castro Ranch Road run down four tributary canyons to San Pablo Dam Road. They all have tributary creeks that feed San Pablo Creek. Sobrante Valley is part of the San Pablo watershed.

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Clark Trail

The most popular trail in El Sobrante is Clark Trail (right photo), which takes hikers, bicyclists, and equestrians to Wildcat Canyon Park, part of the East Bay Regional Park District. The trail begins at the end of Clark Road (off of San Pablo Dam Road), by Waldorf School, and ends when it meets San Pablo Ridge Trail, which is part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail network. This scenic ridge trail goes westward to Alvarado Park and eastward to Tilden Park, and then the trail continues southward along the East Bay Hills ridges to Castro Valley.

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Clark Trail passes by the largest Sargent Cypress tree in California (left photo). This tree is listed in the California Registry of Big Trees. Arthur Cowley, director of the California Register of Big Trees and California Coordinator of Big Trees for American Forests, estimated that this Cypress is from 140 to 160 years old. Unfortunately, this living landmark is in danger of the developer's chain saws if the Clark Road Housing Project is built.

The proposed Clark Road Project covers 144 acres of steep, slide-prone hillside that borders Wildcat Canyon Park, from above Clark Road east to Leisure Lane. Activists in the El Sobrante Valley Legal Defense Fund, Canyon Park Friends of Open Space, and the El Sobrante Greens are working together to stop this project. Some of these activists are seen in the above photo, in front of the famous Sargent Cypress. Our goal is to turn this land into an open-space park for all to enjoy in perpetuity. Contact us if you would like to work with us in saving the El Sobrante hills from inappropriate development.

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The History of El Sobrante

About 3,000 to 7,000 years ago, Sobrante Valley was first visited by the Huchiun. They were one of many peaceful Ohlone tribelets that inhabited the Monterey Bay and San Francisco Bay shorelines and creeks. The Huchiun lived in small villages that ranged from the North Oakland mud flats to the Carquinez Straits. One of their villages was located in what would become El Sobrante, on the now-buried shell mound beside San Pablo Creek, where the El Sobrante Library now stands.

In the 1770s, the Huchiun and all of the other nearby Ohlone tribelets were systematically invited to Mission Delores in San Francisco for large feasts. Once they were inside the mission walls, they were unknowingly baptized Christian when they participated in what they thought was just a white-man's celebration ritual. After the "celebration," they were imprisoned in the mission in order to be forcefully converted to Christianity.

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In addition, the missionaries unsuccessfully attempted to domesticate the Ohlones, in an effort to make them abandon what the Spaniards described in their writings as "their shameless, dirty, lazy, and sinful" ways of living. The Spaniards wanted these "pagan aboriginals," as they were called, to become "industrious civilized Christian farmers" who would voluntarily work farms and provide labor for the Mission and local Spanish military forces. Because of Huchiun resistance, the missionaries and Spanish troops forced the imprisoned Native Americans to do this work as slaves. Those slaves who disobeyed were tortured or killed.

After Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1834, the enslaved Huchiun who were not killed (to "save their souls," according to the Spaniards) were set free. However, their villages and hunting grounds were now all "owned" by those Spanish colonizers who were given Spanish land grants. A large parcel of land east of the shoreline that would become Richmond and vicinity were all part of Rancho de San Pablo. Further east, all the way to and including the hills that fed the creeks in Sobrante Valley and the adjacent areas, was Rancho El Sobrante. Consequently, when the Huchiuns attempted to return to their former villages, they were chased off their ancestral land and sometimes killed by the so-called legal landowners for trespassing.

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Rancho El Sobrante was eventually sold off into smaller ranches. In the early 1900s, Sobrante Valley consisted only of these ranches and a single-lane dirt road that ran down the valley floor, alongside San Pablo Creek. Gradually, these ranches were further divided into even smaller farms and ranches, some of which were further subdivided into large lots, which were sold for building houses. As this process progressed, rural El Sobrante became a semirural community.

Since the 1970s, the semirural nature of El Sobrante has become increasingly urbanized by developers who are building housing projects on the remaining ranches and farms. Houses were increasingly being built on small city-sized lots. Fortunately, the community has fought back against this unchecked urbanization by organizing spunky grassroots groups, earning El Sobrante the reputation of being a difficult place for large developers to get their subdivisions approved. Several housing and commercial projects have been blocked, and those that have been built had to be scaled back before being approved.

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