Mount Diablo State Park

Mount Diablo is a Diablo Range Mountain in northern California 's eastern San Francisco Bay Area's Contra Costa County. It is in Clayton 's south and Danville 's northeast.

 

It is an elevated 3,849 feet (1,173 meters) upthrust peak, visible from much of the San Francisco Bay area. At many angles, Mount Diablo appears to be a double pyramid and has many subsidiary peaks, the highest and nearest of which is the other half of the double pyramid, North Peak, almost as high at 3,557 feet (1,084 m) and about one mile northeast of the main peak.

 

Mount Diablo State Park
 

The highest is in Mount Diablo State Park, an approximately 20,000-acre state park (8,000 ha). The park was the first public open space of a series, often according to Save Mount Diablo, now includes 38 preserves, includes local city open spaces, regional parks, watersheds, buffered in some areas with conservation protected private lands. Preserved lands covering more than 90,000 acres (36,000 ha) on and around Mount Diablo. The park's day-use fee per vehicle is by way of entry: $6 via Macedo Ranch (Danville) or Mitchell Canyon (Clayton), and $10 via South Gate Rd. (Danville) & North Gate Rd. (Walnut Creek) leading up Mount Diablo.

 

Viewshed
 

The Sierra Nevada is easily visible on a clear day. Following a winter storm, the best views are; a snowy Sierra is showing up better and summer days are likely to be hazy. Occasionally, Lassen Peak, 181 miles (291 kilometers) away, is only visible along the earth's curve. Sentinel Dome is visible at Yosemite National Park but Half Dome is covered at 37.755N 119.6657W by the 8000-foot wall. Eight bridges, from west to east, are visible: San Mateo, Bay, Golden Gate, San Rafael, Carquinez, Benicia, Antioch, and Rio Vista.

 

There are ill-founded arguments that the viewshed of the mountain is the largest in the world — even the second largest after Mount Kilimanjaro. It holds one of the Western United States' biggest views and has played a significant role in the development of California. Within the state, countless peaks are taller but Mount Diablo has a remarkable visual prominence for such a low elevation mountain. The towering presence over most of the Bay Area, Delta and Central Valley, and strong visibility even from Mother Lode, all of the key regions during the gold rush and early statehood, made it an important landmark for mapping and navigating. The summit is used as the reference datum for land surveying in much of northern California and Nevada.