Tilden Regional Park: Wildcat Canyon Road - Berkeley CA

City:: Berkeley, CA
Site Type:: Park Roads and Bridges, Parks and Recreation
New Deal Agencies:: Works Progress Administration (WPA), Work Relief Programs
Quality of Information:: Good
Marked:: No
Site Survival:: Extant

Description

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the modern Wildcat Canyon Road, c 1939-42. Wildcat Canyon Road runs along the west side of Tilden Park, then crosses the park and continues over the East Bay hills down to Orinda.

The WPA relief workers upgraded and paved an old dirt road, building retaining walls, adding culverts and constructing the bridge over Wildcat Creek at the junction with South Park Drive.

Wildcat Canyon Road is intersected by Shasta Road at the point where it turns east, by South Park Drive at the Botanical Gardens, and by Inspiration Point Road at the east ridge line.

Source notes

Elbert Vail, The Early Story of the East Bay Regional Parks. Unpublished manuscript, available at East Bay Regional Parks District archives.

Elbert Vail, Progress Report, c 1940, available at East Bay Regional Parks District archives

Elbert Vail, 1940 Master Plan. Oakland CA: East Bay Regional Parks District, 1940, available at East Bay Regional Parks District archives

Amanda Sue Marshall, "WPA and CCC worksites in East Bay Regional Parks," research report for Living New Deal, January 2, 2012.

Mimi Stein, A Vision Achieved:Fifty Years of the East Bay Regional Parks District. Oakland CA: East Bay Regional Parks District, 1984. @ https://www.ebparks.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=25719

Brechin, Gray. 2008. "Forgotten Foundation". Bay Nature Magazine. January 1. https://baynature.org/articles/jan-mar-2008/forgotten-foundation

Smith, Harvey. 2014. Berkeley and the New Deal. Charleston SC: Arcadia Books.

Amanda Sue Marshall, The East Bay Hills: A Brief History. Charleston SC: The History Press, 2017.

Site originally submitted by Richard A Walker on August 2, 2020.