Save Mount Diablo’s Mangini Ranch Educational Preserve is now open to the public for free, group use. Find out more and make a reservation request on our Mangini Ranch Educational Preserve page.

Description

Mangini Ranch. Credit: Scott Hein, 2006

Mangini Ranch connects to Mount Diablo State Park, Lime Ridge Open Space, and Crystyl Ranch open space, and in March 2022, was opened as Save Mount Diablo’s first educational preserve.

The land winds sinuously through history, biology, and geography much like Galindo Creek, the green-lined, blue thread whose headwaters spring up there. Mangini Ranch represents most of the gap between Lime Ridge Open Space and Mount Diablo State Park.

The preserve is an oak and grassland bowl rising to Lime Ridge—it is adjacent to Lime Ridge Open Space on one side—and through chaparral toward the quarried slopes of Mount Zion on the other.

The creek descends north through Crystyl Ranch open space into Concord, its roots the property’s tributaries.

Mangini rises south to the Ginochio Ranch, and nearly to Mount Diablo State Park. The property has high ridgeline views to Marin, Sonoma, and Solano counties. It also has intimate views within the property’s narrow canyons.

Its trail system provides several beautiful loop trails of varying length and difficulty. A short walk allows you to leave development behind.

Animals found there include western burrowing owls, bobcats, coyotes, American badgers, and threatened California red-legged frogs. American kestrels utilize the nesting boxes throughout the property.

Rare plants on the property include the gorgeous orchid-like wildflower, the Hospital Canyon larkspur (Delphinium californicum ssp. interius), and one of the northernmost stands of desert olive (Forestiera pubescens), which is very rare in the Bay Area.

Mangini and Lime Ridge with Diablo in Background. Credit: Scott Hein, March 2008.

The property has survived . . .

. . . . Spanish settlers, Mexican ranchers, American homesteaders, miners, railroads, and suburbs.

Many developers showed interest in the Mangini Ranch, but in 1990 the citizens of Contra Costa County voted to create an Urban Limit Line. The Mangini Ranch wound up outside of the line.

Still, over the next 13 years, one developer or realtor after another floated plans for Mangini. Instead, the Mangini family began negotiations with Save Mount Diablo and now their property has been preserved for all time.

Save Mount Diablo would like to thank the Mangini Family, California Coastal Conservancy, East Bay Regional Park District, the City of Concord, Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation, the Contra Costa Times’ Gary Bogue and his readers, and Save Mount Diablo’s members for their support in completing the acquisition.

Mangini Ranch is available free of charge to a variety of local groups, of all ages and backgrounds, pursuing educational purposes. The preserve can be reserved online.

A Species Count on Mangini Ranch from BioBlitz 2008

The species list stands at 583 species–including 337 insects. There were:

• 63 bird species, including 3 rare or unusual ones
• Eight reptiles, including one rare one
• Three amphibians, including one rare one
• 341 arthropods, including over 24 butterflies, 99 beetles, 91 moths, and 112 Hymnoptera (wasps, bees and ants), two scorpions, two spiders
• 160 plants, including seven rare ones
• Five mammals

Save Mount Diablo’s properties are closed to the public except by guided tour.