The Bay Trail – Ride #16 – Map 16 – Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline

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This was my sixteenth bike ride on my quest to travel 350 miles of the San Francisco Bay Trail – those miles completed so far of the total of 500 miles planned. This time I continued north on the east side of the Bay, following Map 16, along the south shore of the Carquinez Strait.

On a Sunday in early August 2022, the morning’s weather report shared the good news of “beautiful weather again today.”  The weather-caster said there would be no need to go away on vacation:  With much of the country dealing with record heat or heart-breaking flooding at the time, we were having the best weather right here.

The town of Crockett is situated on the south shore of the Carquinez Strait.  The Strait is a narrow, curving tidal strait.  It is part of the tidal estuary formed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers as they meet at the Delta and flow west through Honker Bay, Grizzly Bay and Suisun Bay and then into the San Francisco Bay.  I read somewhere that 50% of California’s snowmelt and rainwater from the Sierras flows into rivers like the Sacramento and San Joaquin and ends up in the San Francisco Bay.

The Strait is a deep-water shipping channel with strong currents and frequent high winds. The Benicia-Martinez bridge crosses the Strait at its eastern end and the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge, also known as the Carquinez Bridge, crosses at the western end.  The latter actually consists of two parallel bridges, one carrying northbound traffic, the other southbound traffic.  The southbound bridge on the west side is a suspension design.  It was built in 2003 to replace the original bridge built in 1927 and weakened by seismic activity.  The Bay Trail goes across this bridge.  The northbound bridge on the east side was built in 1958 to handle increased traffic coming through the area.  It has an older cantilever bridge design, similar to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and the old east span of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge.

Ferries began crossing the Carquinez Strait between Martinez on the south side and Benicia on the north side in the mid-1800’s.  From 1879 to 1930, a train ferry operated between Port Costa on the south side and Benicia.  The ferries began carrying autos in 1913.  A rail bridge was built on the east side of the Benicia-Martinez bridge in 1930.  The Capitol Corridor, California Zephyr and Coast Starlight passenger trains cross the railroad bridge. The Capitol Corridor and California Zephyr turn east towards Sacramento, with the Zephyr continuing on to Chicago.  The Coast Starlight, coming up from southern California, continues north through Oregon all the way to Seattle.

When I ride sections of the Bay Trail, I am used to riding very close to the bay’s edge.  There are mudflats, marshlands and restored salt ponds to see in most places.  The land at the water’s edge is usually relatively flat and gradually rises in elevation as it moves inland, away from the Bay.  As the land rises, it becomes the coastal hills that surround the Bay.  These low coastal ranges are older and have had lots of time to erode compared to the relatively new and very high Sierra Nevada mountain range.  The hills turn a lovely golden color in the summer, when we normally have no rain.

Unexpectedly, the coastal hills along the south side of the Carquinez Straight rise steeply from the water’s edge to an elevation of 750 feet.  There is barely enough flat land between the water and the rising hills to fit two sets of railroad tracks.  The Carquinez Scenic Drive winds along the top of the hills, affording spectacular views of the Carquinez Strait, looking west, east or north across the water.  But there was no room to build the Bay Trail next to the train tracks.  One section of the Scenic Drive—closed over ten years ago as the road buckled and washed away—has been gated and set aside for the Bay Trail and for use by pedestrians, cyclists and those riding horses. 

The Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline opened in 1989 and consists of 1,568 acres of bluffs and shoreline. This upland area is grassland, oak woodland and coastal scrub vegetation, as are most of the Bay Area foothills.  Valley oaks and buckeye are found on east-facing slopes and ravines.  The grasslands are home to western meadowlark, horned lark, house finches, western bluebirds, and American goldfinches.  Raptors, great horned owls and barn owls build their nests in the Valley oaks.  Cooper’s hawks choose riparian ravines for their nests.  Gray foxes, mule deer, raccoons, eastern fox squirrels, gopher snakes and western garter snakes inhabit this area.  Those fishing at Eckley Pier catch striped bass and sturgeon.

In 1775 and 1776, the Spanish Anza Expedition reached this area.  Lt. Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza, accompanied by 240 soldiers and settlers, had traveled 1,800 miles from Sonora, Mexico, to Monterey, California.  Anza led a smaller party to explore the San Francisco Bay and look for additional sites to build missions.  In 1776, records show the group stopped in this area and traded with an Ohlone village for a strange fish over 6 feet long that they had never seen before, which was probably a sturgeon.  The Huchiun-Aguasto, an Ohlone-speaking people, lived in this area.  In 1799, Spanish explorers named the Carquinez Strait from the Greek word for crab.

There are three places to target on this section of the Bay Trail.  The Bay Trail map shows the parking area by Eckley Pier but does not show parking at the Bull Valley staging area or at the Port Costa staging area at the beginning of the George Miller Regional Trail.  I checked Google maps and wasn’t able to find much more information about the parking spots until I actually got there.  There are bathroom facilities, mostly primitive, at Eckley Pier and the Port Costa staging area.

When I drove down a hill and parked near Eckley Pier, the winds were so strong that I put on my red windbreaker over my mauve plaid overshirt.  I heard a fisherman commenting on how unusually cold it was this day. 

One has to cross railroad tracks to reach the pier.  It is important to look both ways for trains before crossing the tracks.  Although there are crossing signals, I never heard them sound when trains passed.  The trains pass frequently and are hard to hear.  From the pier, I got a nice view of both of the Carquinez bridges.

There is a Bull Valley trail extending from the Eckley Pier parking area.  The trail is wide, of loose dirt.  It splits, with the left trail going up a hill too steep to push my bike.  The trail to the right was short, steep and soon ended back at the road. 

I loaded my bike on my car, drove up the hill and parked at the Bull Valley staging area to access the Carquinez Overlook Loop.  Across the road from the parking area sits a red barn on a hill on the No Name Ranch (I kid you not!).  The rolling hills surrounding the barn were covered with golden grass.  Looking back towards the Carquinez Strait, along the water side of the road, I saw burn scars on the hills where I planned to walk.  I learned that, two months earlier, a fast-moving wildfire, the “Scenic Fire”—no doubt named after the Carquinez Scenic Drive—burned through this area, sweeping along the water’s edge up to Scenic Drive and east, stopping just short of the town of Port Costa.  The fire swept up from below as far as the Carquinez Overlook Loop. I saw burn marks coming out of the top of a storm drain.  Our hero firefighters did a good job of keeping the fire contained to a relatively small area and preventing it from jumping the road to the ranch on the other side.  The hills still smelled of fire when I walked along the Overlook loop, but some plants had already begun to grow back.  A bench along the trail had already been replaced.

The Carquinez Overlook Loop trail winds around the tops of the hills and affords spectacular views.  It is packed dirt and wide enough for a vehicle.  However, the path is graded so that it slopes towards the water and a steep descending slope.  I didn’t feel safe riding my bike on it, so I walked most of the loop.  Along this portion of the trail, the winds remained quite strong.

A conservation partnership exists here with local cattle ranchers.  Trail users are asked to keep an iron gate closed so the cattle don’t wander.  Allowing cattle to graze on public lands provides many benefits, including reducing the amount of vegetation which would otherwise be fuel for wildfires and minimizing invasive plants such as poison oak and coyote brush,

From the Overlook Loop, one can see across the Benicia shoals to Benicia’s harbors on the north side of the Strait.

Once again, I loaded my bike on my car and drove further east on the Carquinez Scenic Drive to the Port Costa staging area where the George Miller Regional Trail begins.

The Carquinez Scenic Drive was once known as the Carquinez Shoreline Drive, which was a county road closed in the 1980’s after landslides made it impassible for automobiles.  In 2013, the East Bay Park District began a project to convert the old roadway to a multi-use Class I bicycle/pedestrian trail.  Photos of the old Scenic Drive show a narrow roadway with multiple deep gashes in the asphalt, looking a lot like miles of varicose veins.  Once extensive erosion and tears in the asphalt were repaired, this section of the road—the 1.7-mile “Martinez Intermodal to Crockett” segment of the San Francisco Bay Trail—is being used as a public trail connection for bikes, pedestrians, and equestrian users to link Martinez, Port Costa and Crockett. 

 There is a parking area where the George Miller trail begins—the Port Costa staging area—where a gate across the Carquinez Scenic Drive prevents vehicles from going further. Here, all the surrounding hills were golden—the color that locals are used to during a California summer.  Thankfully the wildfire did not make it this far along the shoreline’s foothills.  I parked in shade under oak and pine trees growing close together.  There was less wind here and it was later in the day, so I no longer needed a jacket or overshirt.

The George Miller Regional Trail, a/k/a the Scenic Drive, is named for Congressman George Miller, first elected in 1974 and known for being the lead author of many conservation and environmental laws.  Congressman Miller supported the East Bay Regional Park District by securing $900,000 in the 2005 Federal Transportation Bill for this portion of the San Francisco Bay Trial.  He also secured a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Richmond’s Breuner Marsh Restoration Project and, among other projects, two grants for the Point Pinole Regional Shoreline Atlas Road Bridge project in Richmond.

At the west entrance to the George Miller Regional Trail is a trail crossing sign for newts. The trail winds along the contours of the hills, up and down more steeply than I was expecting.  On the part of the Scenic Drive that allows cars, I had to put mine in second gear more than once.  There were hills with similar inclines on the George Miller trail.  I constantly shifted from the easiest gear on my bike to get up the inclines, then to the hardest gear to gain speed going downhill. Although my total ride this day was five miles, with the heavy backpack I carry on these rides and the steep hills, it felt more like ten.

Two sets of railroad tracks hug the shore along the Carquinez Strait.  Several trains passed every ten to fifteen minutes when I was parked at Eckley Pier in the morning.  At the end of my ride on the George Miller trail, a long freight train slowly made its way south along the tracks and pulled to one side as a faster train overtook it.  The string of oval freight cars looked like a long caterpillar from far away, with metal wires sticking straight up into the air from each car like antennae.

At the east end of the George Miller Regional Trail is a second gate preventing vehicles from entering.  Beyond this point one can continue on the Carquinez Scenic Drive, which is quite narrow with no shoulder for bikes, and try to share it with cars.  I could see the road continue to wind around the sides of the hills.  Since the road was no longer part of the Bay Trail, remained at the same elevation and did not appear to get down close to the water, I turned back. 

At the east gate of the George Miller trail, looking across the Carquinez Strait, I could see Point Benicia and Benicia’s Marina Park, its hills beyond thickly sprinkled with residential homes.  From this point I could also see the Benicia-Martinez Bridge. 

A long fishing pier extends out into the water from the south shore, east of the Nejedly Staging Area.  This is at the end of the Carquinez Scenic Drive, beyond this section of the Bay Trail and not accessible by car from the west side.

Several cars came up the Scenic Drive, stopped at the trail gate and turned around.  According to the maps I studied, it is not easy for cars to get from the west side of the trail to the east side.  One has to drive a big circle southeast and then circle north to enter via 680 and Highway 4, and it’s quite a drive up and down hills on narrow country roads to get there.  Even the Carquinez Scenic Drive is narrow and winding, similar to the mountain road one takes to get to the top of Mount Hamilton in the eastern foothills of Santa Clara Valley near San Jose in the South Bay: one-lane, winding, no shoulder for bikes.

It was about 1:45 p.m. when I began the return ride back to my car.  The sun was hot and I chose to walk many of the uphills so as not to overheat.  In the morning, I had put ice cubes in my Camelbak water bladder and then added water.  This gave me a nice cool drink during the hot afternoon.

Along the return ride, I noticed some of the conditions that must have caused the road to be closed to traffic years earlier:  the water side (westbound) lane is still dangerous.  It suddenly becomes one lane for a while where a portion has washed away—something I didn’t notice earlier when I was heading east.  The section is in the shade, making the condition more difficult to see. There is no warning that this is coming up, so be careful!  Further up the road, the asphalt has buckled and is quite uneven in several places—a hazard for bikes.

As I mentioned, I rode five miles this day. With all the steep hills and my heavy backpack, it felt like ten.  The spectacular views made the ride worth it. My odometer had now reached 239 miles.

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Supporting Agencies (project funding and project partners):  East Bay Regional Park District, TIGER II (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant, SAFETEA-LU, State Coastal Conservancy, Contra Costa Transportation Authority Measure J, East Bay Park District Measure WW Development Funds, CalTrans

Information sources:  S.F. Bay Trail website, Map 16; interpretive exhibits (information boards) along the Bay Trail provided by the East Bay Regional Park District and some also provided by the National Park Service Challenge Cost Share Program; “Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline – Martinez, Crockett,” a pamphlet produced by East Bay Regional Park District: Wikipedia; https://patch.com/california/martinez/wildfire-burns-carquinez-scenic-drive-martinez