Castleridge Trailhead

3464 Old Foothill Road, Pleasanton, California 94588, United States

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Pleasanton Ridge is a lovely 9.090-acre, long, linear park on an oak-covered ridge overlooking Pleasanton and the Livermore Valley. Until recently, however, the only access to the park was from the south, making the park mostly popular with cyclists and long-distance hikers.

 

All this changed when the East Bay Regional Park District opened the new Castleridge Trail, near the intersection of Foothill Road and Old Foothill Road, and west of Alviso Adobe Community Park.

 

From this trail, a multi-purpose trail extends to the northern ridge of the Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park, serving as a new and important point of public access to the northern areas of the park, as well as helping the district to connect wildlife corridors and protect natural resources.

 

This trail is much more right in Pleasanton, on the outskirts of the city, with the houses nearby. With Foothill High School so close, that's going to be another opportunity for users. People are most likely to use it.

 

The beauty of using the Castleridge Staging Area is that it brings you to the north of the park, which a lot of people don't get to because when they get to Foothill, they have to go up a mile to get to the top of the park and make their way up the ridge. A lot of people are not willing to take a 10-or 12-mile hike to the north.

 

Once at the top as far as the trail options are available, Sinbad Loop would be one of the most popular trails. People love the different types and numbers of plants and trees and the different points of view of the Tri-Valley and other surrounding areas.

 

Comparing the new trail with the existing one in the south, People noticed that the Castleridge trail was a steep climb to the top, with no switchbacks, but that the outside and the back made for a good workout.

One of the attractive features of this trail is the fact that you can get a good hike just from the trail to the top and back, because it's a full two miles of each way. There's also more shade on this trail going to the top, so this would be the best choice for a summer hike.

 

The benefit of this trail over the other existing access is that once you're at the top, you'll immediately get great views. You can stop and look back; you don't have to go very far up the trail to get some wonderful views across the valley.

 

The addition of this new access point to the park is an example of good planning and partnership. The first step required land to be made available and the funds to be raised to purchase it. In 2014, the Park District purchased the 231-acre Castleridge property for $2.2 million, using a $1 million grant from the Alameda County Altamont Landfill and Resource Facility Open Space Advisory Committee and matching funding from the District Measure WW.

 

A critical partnership was established between the Park District and the City of Pleasanton. Concern over a large influx of cars and overcrowding has led to a series of meetings with residents. Pleasanton agreed to convert one lane from Old Foothill Road to 50 parallel parking spaces, leaving the second lane to one-way traffic.

 

The Park District has added a drinking water fountain and an accessible toilet and planted oak trees to match the oak savannah in the area.

 

Another town concern was the possibility that the influx of a large number of cars and people would have a negative impact on the historic Alviso Adobe Park, an interpretive park with a 150-year-old adobe building and the reconstruction of Meadowlark Dairy.