Peninsula Trails. Jean Rusmore
Cruz Mountains, heavy winter rainfall and summer fog nurture a thick forest in the canyons and on the upper slopes. Up to 60 inches of rain falls in wet years, about 45 inches in normal years. Summer fog is formed when cold water beside the coast upwells to the surface and chills the moisture-laden air above, causing condensation. The rising hot air inland creates a partial vacuum, into which foggy air flows.
The west side has three main plant communities:
1. Giant coast redwood trees—the moisture encourages lush growth in southern San Mateo County and nurtures associated Douglas firs; tan oak and bay laurel trees grow among these conifers until they are shaded out by the taller redwoods.
2. Grasslands—found on exposed west- and south-facing ridges, making sunny pockets scattered along the trails. They are either native grasses or introduced species.
3. Coastal scrub—a softer version of chaparral found on the coast itself, where the winds are strong and the salt spray pervasive, covering consists of some native grasses and introduced species that cover most of the coastal terraces and bluffs.
Fauna—You will also see and hear numerous birds, and if you look closely you will notice lizards, salamanders and the myriad spiders and insects of the earth. You may see a squirrel in the trees or an occasional rabbit in the brush. Larger animals, once so plentiful, are now seldom seen, though you may have the pleasure of catching sight of a deer in the woods or an occasional coyote in the grasslands. Mammal predators such as gray foxes, coyotes, bobcats, and even an occasional mountain lion live in the wild areas.
Footprints in the wet earth by a stream or in the dust on a sunny trail will tell you there is still animal life nearby. Small holes in the ground and tunnels underfoot are probably all you will see of the many burrowers, such as badgers, voles, field mice, and gophers. In thick woodlands you may find the three-foot-high piles of sticks that are the homes of woodrats. Along the San Francisco Bay Trail there are a few places where small populations of the burrowing owl are still extant.
The Peninsula’s and Coastside’s Past
Although humans have lived on the Peninsula for at least 3000 years, it is only in the past 200 years that they have significantly changed the natural landscape. Spanish newcomers in the 18th century hunted game with their guns, brought herds that grazed the hills, and introduced annual grasses that supplanted the native bunchgrass. By the mid-19th century, Anglos from the East were changing the face of the Peninsula, logging over the forests and farming the valleys and foothills.
But it was not until the mid-20th century that the settlements scattered down the length of the Peninsula suddenly spread over the valley, reshaped the hills, and replaced woodlands and orchards with houses, roads, and shopping centers.
However, the Bayside, which four decades ago was seemingly about to be engulfed in buildings, is now witnessing renewed efforts toward containing its urban spread. Public and private groups are setting aside parks, preserves, and trail corridors that complement the increasingly dense settlement patterns of the Bayside. An expanding system of public greenbelts now gives us the opportunity to walk through the lovely foothill landscape, follow a stream, or climb a trail up our steep mountains to thousands of acres of forest on both sides of the Skyline ridge. Public beaches and a coastal trail offer access to the length of the San Mateo County Coast. A walking and bicycling trail on the Bay’s shore extends from the San Francisco to Palo Alto with only a few gaps. The total size of public parklands in the area covered by this book is more than 60,000 acres. Peninsula and Bay Area residents are fortunate that foresighted citizens urged the state and counties to buy so much beautiful, unspoiled land for public parks. It is the goal of this guide book to help the reader explore all the wonderful parks and preserves lying on both sides of the Skyline ridge from the San Francisco County line to roughly the area north of Highways 85 and 9.
Earliest Inhabitants
The first people to walk these hills were the Ohlones, a tribe of hunter-gatherers who lived along the Bay and Pacific shores and in the foothills between San Francisco and Monterey. When the first European explorers came to the Peninsula, they found their way crisscrossed by trails worn by these Native Americans as they went from their creekside villages to the shores of the Bay, into the hills, and across the mountains to the coast. Before the Spanish era the Peninsula supported one of the densest Native American populations in the country. Nearly 10,000 Ohlones lived between San Francisco and Monterey.
The Ohlones lived well without cultivating the land. They thrived on the incredible bounty of Peninsula woodlands, streams, and shores. Elk, deer, antelope, coyote, fox, bear, and mountain lion roamed the hills, along with plentiful small game. Birds, particularly waterfowl, filled the air in sky-darkening numbers. Acorns, the staple of the Ohlones’ diet, were gathered from the thick stands of oak in the hills and on the valley floors. Families returned to ancestral groves year after year to harvest. Welcome seasonal additions to their diet were the plentiful grass and flower seeds, roots, fruits, and berries. They also used the bountiful supply of fish and shellfish from the Bay, the creeks, and the ocean. Indeed, when early explorers were offered gifts of food, they commented that native fare was palatable, even tasty.
Although the tribelets traveled between Bay and foothills most of the year to gather food, they did not stray far from the small territories they considered their own. A few groups made longer expeditions to trade with others for beads, salt, pine nuts, obsidian, abalone shells, and wood for bows. Regular trade routes crossed the hills between Bay and ocean.
The Ohlones were able to provide well for their people and lived in relative peace with their neighbors and in harmony with the land. Save for the periodic burning of the native bunchgrasses and underbrush in the meadows to keep them open for better hunting and acorn-gathering, and the paths worn by centuries of their footprints, these peoples had little impact on the land or the animals around them. Early Europeans reported that the natives moved among the wildlife and small game without arousing their fears. As Malcolm Margolin states in The Ohlone Way, animals and humans inhabited the very same world, and the distance between them was not very great.”
The coming of the European, with guns, horses, and cattle, changed all this. The antelope, elk, and bear soon disappeared, and other animals retreated from sight. Changes in the land were profound. Cattle grazing and the inadvertent introduction of European oat grass nearly eliminated the native perennial grasses. For the native peoples, change was swift and complete with the advent of the Spanish missions.
The Spanish-Mexican Period
Two centuries after Europeans first explored the California coast by ship, the overland expedition of Gaspar de Portolá discovered San Francisco Bay in 1769. This event paved the way for permanent Spanish settlement. Mission Dolores and the Presidio of San Francisco, as well as Mission Santa Clara, were founded in 1776. A year later, the Pueblo of Guadalupe in San José was built. Mission Santa Cruz on the Coastside was founded in 1791.
After the founding of these missions and their supporting ranches and outposts, most of the natives had been moved from their villages to missions and ranches, their families broken up, their old ways lost. In just over half a century the stable culture that had changed little over thousands of years disappeared. In the final tragedy, the native people succumbed by the thousands to imported diseases to which they had little or no resistance.
In the brief period of Mexican rule the missions and their supporting farms were secularized, and the ensuing disruptions of mission life further demoralized the remaining natives. Then, with the Gold Rush came land-hungry Easterners, who gained title to the few remaining lands occupied by the native peoples, displacing these first Americans who had lived in harmony on the Peninsula for so long. The United States census of 1860 listed only 62 persons on the Peninsula as Native Americans.
In the early Spanish days the entire Peninsula was divided into a few vast supporting ranches for the missions and Presidio. Herds of cattle and sheep grazed over the hills. Grains, vegetables, and fruits from the ranches on the Bayside near San Mateo and from the coast north of Santa Cruz supplied these Spanish outposts.
When