1.
Briones Hills
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The Briones Hills form a low mountain range in western Contra Costa County, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States. The hills are in the Southern Inner Coast Ranges group of the California Coast Ranges System, cites and towns adjacent to or in the foothills of the range include, Lafayette, Martinez, Orinda, Pleasant Hill, Alhambra Valley, and Walnut Creek. Briones Regional Park, in the East Bay Regional Park District System and it also protects some of the ranges California oak woodland, chaparral, and riparian habitats. Briones Reservoir, of the East Bay Municipal Utility District, is located in the western area and it is impounded by Briones Dam on Bear Creek. The headwaters of Pinole Creek are in the Briones Hills, on the slope of Costa Peak. The headwaters of Alhambra Creek are in the hills within Briones Regional Park, mountain ranges of the San Francisco Bay Area Natural history of the California Coast Ranges
2.
Contra Costa County, California
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Contra Costa County is a county in the state of California in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,049,025, the name is Spanish for opposite coast, referring to its position on the other side of the bay from San Francisco. Contra Costa County is included in the San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area and it occupies the northern portion of the East Bay region and is primarily suburban. In the northern part of the county, significant coal and sand deposits were formed in even earlier geologic eras, other areas of the county have ridges exposing ancient but intact seashells, embedded in sandstone layers alternating with limestone. Layers of volcanic ash ejected from geologically recent but now extinct volcanoes, compacted and now tilted by compressive forces, may be seen at the site of some road excavations. This county is an agglomeration of several distinct geologic terranes, as is most of the greater San Francisco Bay Area, younger deposits at middle altitudes include pillow lavas, the product of undersea volcanic eruptions. There is an extensive but little recorded human history pre-European settlement in this area, the earliest definitively established occupation by modern man appears to have occurred six to ten thousand years ago. However, there may have been human presence far earlier, at least as far as non–settling populations are concerned, extensive trading from tribe to tribe transferred exotic materials such as obsidian throughout the region from far distant Californian tribes. Unlike the nomadic Native American of the Great Plains it appears that these tribes did not incorporate warfare into their culture but were generally cooperative. Within these cultures the concept of individual or collective land ownership was nonexistent, early European settlers in the region, however, did not record much about the culture of the natives. Most of what is known comes from preserved contemporaneous and excavated artifacts. Although there were no missions established within this county, Spanish influence here was direct and extensive, in 1821 Mexico gained independence from Spain. Mission lands extended throughout the Bay Area, including portions of Contra Costa County, between 1836 and 1846, during the era when California was a province of independent Mexico, the following 15 land grants were made in Contra Costa County. Rough surveying was based on a map, or diseño, measured by streams, shorelines, and/or horseman who marked it with rope, lands outside rancho grants were designated el sobrante, as in surplus or excess, and considered common lands. The law required the construction of a house within a year, fences were not required and were forbidden where they might interfere with roads or trails. Locally a large family required roughly 2000 head of cattle and two leagues of land to live comfortably. Foreign entrepreneurs came to the area to provide goods that Mexico couldn’t, Rancho Canada de los Vaqueros was granted to Francisco Alviso, Antonio Higuera, and Manuel Miranda. Two ranchos, both called Rancho San Ramon, were granted by the Mexican government in the San Ramon Valley, in 1833, Bartolome Pacheco and Mariano Castro shared the two square league Rancho San Ramon
3.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
4.
East Bay Regional Park District
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The East Bay Regional Park District is a special district operating in Alameda County and Contra Costa County, California, within the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area. It maintains and operates a system of parks which is the largest urban regional park district in the United States. The administrative office is located in Oakland, as of 2015, EBRPD spans 120,000 acres with 65 parks and over 1,200 miles of trails. Some of these parks are areas, others include a variety of visitor attractions. The trails are used for non-motorized transportation such as biking, hiking. Nearly 150 miles of paved trails through urban areas link the parks together, a destructive grass fire that broke out in Wildcat Canyon blew west into Berkeley on September 27,1923 and burned down 640 structures homes. The East Bay Water Company was harshly criticized for its failure to deliver water to successfully fight the fire. A state law was passed that enabled citizens of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties to create a district that could obtain water from the Mokelumne River. The East Bay Municipal District was formed and approved by the electorate, the EBRPD was founded in 1934, and acquired its first land two years later, when the East Bay Municipal Utility District sold 2,166 acres of its surplus land. The founders of the district included Robert Sibley, a hiking enthusiast, Hollis Thompson, then Berkeley City Manager, and Charles Lee Tilden, among others. William Penn Mott, Jr. served as director of the agency from 1962 to 1967, in June 2013, EBRPD purchased a 1,900 acres tract of land formerly known as Roddy Ranch in east Contra Costa County. The tract lies south of Antioch and west of Brentwood. The cost was reported as $14.24 million, funding will also be provided by California Wildlife Conservation Board and an unidentified private foundation. The acquisition does not include Roddy Ranch Golf Club or about 240 acres of privately owned land inside the project boundary, the East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservancy will install gates, fencing and signs around the tract in the coming year, while the sale is in escrow. The new area will likely be named Deer Valley Regional Park, in 2016, Vargas Plateau Regional Park in Fremont was the first park ever to have been shut down as the result of legal action in the more than 80-year history of EBRPD. During 2014, EBRPD cut park hours on a temporary and interim basis to reduce access to Mission Peak in Fremont. The parks administered by the EBRPD vary greatly in size and character, there are also bay shore parks such as the Point Pinole Regional Shoreline north of Richmond, the Coyote Hills Regional Park near Fremont, the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline on San Leandro Bay, and the Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline south of the Oakland International Airport, the district also includes a former farm, a former coal mine, an extinct volcano, and one of the biggest dog-walking parks in the country. Redwood Regional Park contains the largest remaining stand of coast redwood in the East Bay
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San Francisco Bay Area
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The San Francisco Bay Area is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses the cities and metropolitan areas of San Jose, San Francisco. The Bay Areas nine counties are Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. The combined statistical area of the region is the second-largest in California, the fifth-largest in the United States, the Bay Area has the second-most Fortune 500 Companies in the United States, and is known for its natural beauty, liberal politics, entrepreneurship, and diversity. The eastern side of the bay, consisting of Alameda and Contra Costa counties, is known locally as the East Bay, the inner East Bay is more densely populated, with generally older buildings, and a more ethnically diverse population. The word Lamorinda was coined by combining the names of the cities it includes, Lafayette, Moraga, walnut Creek is situated east of Lamorinda and north of the San Ramon Valley and, together with Concord, Martinez, and Pleasant Hill comprises Central Contra Costa County. The cities of Antioch, Pittsburg, Brentwood, Oakley and the areas surrounding them comprise East Contra Costa County. The Tri-Valley consists of the Amador, the Livermore, and the San Ramon Valleys, dublin and Pleasanton comprise the Amador Valley, Livermore lies in the Livermore Valley, and the San Ramon Valley consists of Alamo, Danville, Diablo and its namesake, San Ramon. The outer East Bay is connected to the inner East Bay by BART, Interstate 580 to the south, and State Routes State Route 4 to the north, the outer East Bays infrastructure was mostly built up after World War II. This area remains largely white demographically, although the Hispanic and Filipino populations have grown significantly over the past 2–3 decades, the region north of the Golden Gate Bridge is known locally as the North Bay. This area encompasses Marin County, Sonoma County, Napa County, the city of Fairfield, being part of Solano County, is often considered the easternmost city of the North Bay. With few exceptions, this region is affluent, Marin County is ranked as the wealthiest in the state. The North Bay is relatively rural compared to the remainder of the Bay Area, with areas of undeveloped open space, farmland. Santa Rosa in Sonoma County is the North Bays largest city, with a population of 167,815 and a Metropolitan Statistical Area population of 466,891, making it the fifth-largest city in the Bay Area. The North Bay is the section of the Bay Area that is not currently served by a commuter rail service. The area from San Francisco to the Silicon Valley, geographically part of the San Francisco Peninsula, is known locally as The Peninsula, many of these families are of foreign background and have significantly contributed to the diversity of the area. Whereas the term peninsula technically refers to the entire geographical San Franciscan Peninsula, in local terms, San Francisco is surrounded by water on three sides, the north, east, and west. The city squeezes roughly 870,000 people in under 47 square miles, on any given day, there can be as many as 1 million people in the city because of the commuting population and tourism
6.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
7.
East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area)
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The eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area, commonly referred to as the East Bay, includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, with a population of roughly 2.5 million in 2010, it is the most populous subregion in the Bay Area. Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay and the third largest in the Bay Area, the city serves as a major transportation hub for the U. S. West Coast, and its port is the largest in Northern California, increased population has led to the growth of such large edge cities as Berkeley, Hayward, Concord and Fremont. The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 with its terminus at the newly constructed Oakland Long Wharf. Today the Port of Oakland is the Bay Areas largest port, in 1868, the University of California was formed from the private College of California and a new campus was built in what would become Berkeley. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake saw a number of refugees flee to the relatively undamaged East Bay. As the East Bay grew, the push to connect it with a permanent link than ferry service resulted in the completion of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge in 1936. The Bay Area saw further growth in the decades following World War II, the 1937 completion of the Caldecott Tunnel through the Berkeley Hills fueled growth further east, where there was undeveloped land. Cities in the Diablo Valley, including Concord and Walnut Creek, the addition of the BART commuter rail system in 1972 further encouraged development in increasingly far-flung regions of the East Bay. Today, the valleys east of the Berkeley Hills contain large affluent suburban communities such as Walnut Creek, San Ramon, the East Bay is not a formally defined region, aside from its being described as a region inclusive of Alameda and Contra Costa counties. As development moves generally eastward, new areas are described as being part of the East Bay, beyond the borders of Alameda County, the large population of Tracy is connected as a bedroom community housing commuters traveling to or through the East Bay. Except for some hills and ridges which exist as parklands or undeveloped land, and some farmland in eastern Contra Costa and Alameda Counties, the East Bay is highly urbanized. The East Bay shoreline is a corridor with several cities exceeding 100,000 residents, including Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, Richmond. In the inland valleys on the east side of the Berkeley Hills, the land is developed, particularly on the eastern fringe of Contra Costa county. In the inland valleys, the density is less and the cities smaller. The only cities exceeding 100,000 residents in the valleys are Antioch. The free East Bay Monthly has been published since 1970, in the early years of the evolution of USA Today, during the early 1980s, they operated regional newspapers, with the regions paper entitled East Bay Today
8.
Lafayette, California
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Lafayette is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. As of 2011, the population was estimated to be 24,285. It was named after the Marquis de La Fayette, a French military hero of the American Revolutionary War, today Lafayette is known for its pastoral rolling hills and wealthy inhabitants. In 2009, estimated household income in Lafayette was over $120,000, more than double the statewide average. Before the colonization of the region by Spain, Lafayette and its vicinity were inhabited by the Saclan tribe of the indigenous Bay Miwok, ohlone also populated some of the areas along Lafayette Creek. The indigenous inhabitants first contact with Europeans was in the late 18th century with the founding of Catholic missions in the region, most of what is currently Lafayette was given as a Mexican land grant, Rancho Acalanes to Candelario Valencia in 1834. The name Acalanes seems to have come from the name of a village in the area. American settlement started with the arrival of Elam Brown from St. Joseph and he purchased Rancho Acalanes in 1848. The settlement continued to grow due to its proximity to San Francisco, starting with Browns group of 18 settlers. Brown founded a mill in 1853, a school began in 1852 in a one-room schoolhouse, taught by a 25-year-old Kentucky migrant, Benjamin Shreve. By 1865 the school had expanded to 43 students in five classes, in 1893, a new schoolhouse was built to accommodate the increasing number of students, this building still stands today. On March 2,1857 the LaFayette post office was established by the U. S. Postal Service, the name LaFayette came together with the communitys first post office. In 1857 Benjamin Shreve, owner and manager of a roadside hotel-general store, applied for a post office for the community, first requesting the name Centerville. When informed that a post office with that already existed in California, Shreve suggested La Fayette. The first LaFayette post office was established at 3535 Plaza Way and Shreve became the towns first permanent postmaster, holding the job for 30 years. Spelling, On the original document from the U. S. Postal Service, dated 2 March 1857, in 1864 the place name Lafayette first appeared on a map of the area, titled Bancrofts Map of California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Yet research by Ruth Dyer, Lafayette historian, shows that the name of the post office and of the new town soon began to be written as two words, “La Fayette. ”By 1890 it had changed to one word, Lafayette. Post Office Department in Feb.1899, then by 1905 it was back to two words
9.
Walnut Creek, California
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Walnut Creek is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States, located 16 miles east of the city of Oakland in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Its active downtown neighborhood features hundred-year-old buildings and extensive high-end retail establishments, restaurants, as of 2014, the citys total estimated population is 67,673. Diablo, and the Tactan at Danville and Walnut Creek, on San Ramon Creek, todays Walnut Creek is located amidst the earlier site of four Mexican land grants. One of these land grants – measuring 18,000 acres – belonged to Juana Sanchez de Pacheco, Ygnacio Sibrian, one of the grandsons, created the first roofed home in the valley in about 1850. The grant was called Rancho Arroyo de Las Nueces y Bolbones, named after the principal waterway, the Arroyo de las Nueces was named for the occurrence in the valley of the native species of walnut tree, the California Walnut. With the coming of American settlers following the Mexican-American War, a settlement called The Corners emerged, named because it was the place where roads from Pacheco. The site of this first American settlement is today at the intersection of Mt. Diablo Boulevard. The first town settler was William Slusher, who built a dwelling on the bank of Walnut Creek, in the year 1855, Milo Hough of Lafayette built the hotel named Walnut Creek House in the corners. A blacksmith shop and a store soon joined the hotel, two decades later, the community changed its name from The Corners to Walnut Creek. In December 1862 a United States Post Office was established, the downtown street patterns laid out in 1871–1872 by pioneer Homer Shuey on a portion of one of his familys large cattle ranches are still present today. Walnut Creek began to grow with the arrival of Southern Pacific Railroad service in 1891, on October 21,1914, the town and the surrounding area of 500 acres ), were incorporated as the 8th city in Contra Costa County. A branch line of the Southern Pacific railroad ran through Walnut Creek until the late 1970s, the East Bay Regional Park Districts Iron Horse Trail, used by walkers, runners and bikers, runs over what were portions of that branch line. The mainline of the Sacramento Northern Railway passed through Walnut Creek, today, the Pittsburg/Bay Point – SFO Line line of the Bay Area Rapid Transit serves Walnut Creek with a station adjacent to Highway 680. Walnut Creek is located at 37°54′23″N 122°03′54″W, portions lie in both the San Ramon Valley and the Ygnacio Valley below the western slopes of Mount Diablo. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 19.8 sq mi,0.06 percent of which is water. Walnut Creek owns more open space per capita than any community in the state of California. In 1974, Walnut Creek voters approved a $6.7 million bond measure that allowed the city to purchase 1,800 acres of undeveloped hillsides, ridge lines, and park sites. Walnut Creek owns parts of Lime Ridge Open Space, Shell Ridge Open Space, Acalanes Ridge Open Space, the East Bay Regional Park District operates Diablo Foothills Regional Park and Castle Rock Regional Recreation Area, both in Walnut Creek
