logo for print

Do you love connecting with Bay Area landscapes and critters? Become a Friend of Bay Nature. Send us some acorns today!

On the Fault Line at Los Trancos

On the Fault Line at Los Trancos Photo by Jennifer Davis.

by Rob Lehman — published October 12, 2011

Los Trancos is one of the smallest preserves in the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, but one of the most interesting to visit. With five miles of easy trails split by the San Andreas Fault, this 275-acre park is one of two in California devoted to showcasing landscape features formed by the shifting along the fault. A recreated wooden fence shows the three-foot gap originally left by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Pick up a brochure at the park entrance and follow along on the 1.5-mile San Andreas Fault Trail, where nine stations correspond to brochure notes explaining the earthen benches, sag ponds, landslides, and other interesting landscape features created by movement along the fault.

The San Andreas Trail also features wonderful vistas on a clear day of Mount Umunhum, downtown San Francisco, Mount Tamalpais, and Mount Diablo. The park's hikers-only trails loop through landscapes of open grasslands, shady forests, and wet creekside habitat, where the air is pungent with the scent of bay laurel. Giant canyon and coast live oak, madrone, blue elderberry, big-leaf maple, California coffeeberry, creambush, coyote brush, toyon, and, of course, poison oak flourish there along with hound's-tongue, snakeroot, and giant trillium.

Getting there: The preserve entrance is on Page Mill Road, 1.5 miles east of Skyline Boulevard and seven miles west of Interstate 280.

Photographer and writer Rob Lehman lives in San Jose. See his work at lehmanphotography.com.

This article is part of our "On the Trail" series, which highlights a particular park or trail you can visit.

  Comments powered by Disqus

Related Content (Show all related content >)

Shop:

Tags for this Item

Los Trancos Open Space Preserve |