In 1928, conservationist, hiker, and University of California alumnus Robert Sibley, saw into the future of the open rolling hills above the Berkeley campus. “These valuable pieces of land ought to be preserved forever,” he forewarned. So began a movement… read more

Harvey Smith’s Berkeley and the New Deal is an eye opener. Like many of Arcadia Publishing’s books, its focus is on local history, richly illustrated with photographs. But Berkeley and the New Deal tells a bigger story. Smith has written… read more

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built Skyline Boulevard along the crest of the Berkeley-Oakland Hills in 1935-36. It employed around 1500 men daily and cost $131,000.  The work described in photographs in the National Archives as “realignment, cleaning [land]slides, drainage structures… read more

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) set up five camps in the East Bay hills, starting in 1933-34 and carrying on until 1942.  From those camps, the “CCC boys” set out into the newly-created East Bay regional parks to do a… read more