San Benito County

Pinnacles National Park

Get the free San Benito County Public and Protected Lands Map, plus updates on San Benito County and Diablo Range!

The free San Benito County Public and Protected Lands Map will be available soon. In the meantime, here are links for our Diablo Range map and our Mount Diablo regional trail map on Avenza.

Save Mount Diablo and the Diablo Range

Save Mount Diablo’s mission is to preserve the natural lands on and around Mount Diablo, and to protect Mount Diablo’s sustaining Diablo Range, which includes San Benito County and the Gabilans.

North of Altamont Pass/Highway 580, we’ve expanded Mount Diablo’s parks from 7,000 acres to more than 120,000 acres. More than 30 percent of the East Bay is protected with thousands of miles of trails, and hundreds of staging areas and public access points.

Everybody lives within a few minutes of parks and trails. In San Benito County, just 19 percent of the county has some protection.

In 2015, Save Mount Diablo began expanding our work from the East Bay south across Altamont Pass.

The Diablo Range runs 200 miles north to south through central California between Highway 101 and Highway 5, crosses 12 counties, and covers 3.5 million acres—five times larger than Yosemite National Park.

What’s amazing is the wildlife, including mountain lions, golden eagles, tule elk, and California condors.

Save San Benito

Draft San Benito County trail map, which will be available soon.

San Benito County is the heart of the Diablo Range, the biggest piece of it, with the tallest peak, San Benito Mountain.

Almost no one knows about the Diablo Range because it’s crossed only by major highways in two places (Altamont and Pacheco passes) so we’re working to make it better known.

When you cross Pacheco Pass or drive south on Highway 25 past Pinnacles, you’re in the Diablo Range. Only about 25 percent is protected.

Our goal is to expand parks and provide more recreational opportunities on public lands for San Benito residents. We’ll start by showing you what’s already here in a new San Benito County Public and Protected Lands Map. Fill out the form near the top of the page to sign up for the map.

The Threats

San Benito is at a critical moment. The county is small, with just 68,000 residents, but it’s the fastest growing county in the state. Will it be famous for its farms, parks, and small historic towns, its perfect climate, and lots of tourist and economic opportunities like Monterey?

Or for rapid, out-of-control development, like San Jose and Silicon Valley? Will Hollister and San Juan Bautista be surrounded by farms and orchards, or subdivision after subdivision until they merge with Gilroy and Salinas?

San Benito County has lost 43 percent of its farmland since the mid-1980s. Most of the flat, fertile farmland in north county could be lost in a generation.

What San Benito doesn’t have are the services or infrastructure—water, sewer, fire, police, schools, and especially roads, to handle such rapid growth.

Out-of-town and foreign developers have noticed how easy development is in San Benito and they are making big moves.

They build relationships with politicians and spend big money on campaigns. They’ll make promises local governments can’t enforce, digging the hole deeper on services until it’s so bad they ask you to bail them out.

People Power

It’s a miracle San Benito is still so amazing. One reason is the small grassroots group Protect San Benito. They’re doing great work.

They stopped oil fracking in the county, and they’ve collected signatures to put a growth-control people’s initiative on the ballot.

San Benito County residents voted YES on “Empower Voters to Make Land Use Decisions” in the November 2024 election.

Residents need help to maintain beautiful San Benito County and its quality of life. Our efforts have been to help make it a fair fight.

Grassroots versus Astroturf

Protect San Benito is a true grassroots organization, volunteers, friends, and neighbors, getting together to defend the community.

Two years ago, they put a growth control measure on the ballot. The developers’ best hope was to confuse people. They called their opposition committee “Neighbors to Preserve San Benito.” Sound familiar?

They were pretending to be Protect San Benito and grassroots to confuse voters even though they were developer-funded. It’s called “astroturfing.” It’s fake grassroots.

They claimed the initiative controlling growth would make traffic worse, among other things, the exact opposite of what it would have done. When people are confused, they’re more likely to vote “No.” The measure lost.

Protect San Benito made some changes, collected thousands of signatures to qualify an initiative, and tried again in November 2024 with more time for public education. Fortunately, Measure A passed!

The developers tried to confuse the public. Only if you check campaign contribution forms will you find out that their support is from out-of-town developers or out-of-the-country land speculators.

They want short-term profits regardless of San Benito’s failing sewer system or overloaded schools and roads.

Meanwhile, Save Mount Diablo wants to help create parks and trails and improve San Benito’s quality of life. We have been supporting local grassroots community groups to protect San Benito County and to oppose the landfill expansion.

We are increasingly working with Pinnacles National Park and the Bureau of Land Management. We’re almost finished with our first San Benito County Public and Protected Lands Map. And we recently created a video about San Benito near the top of this page.

Ask the simple questions: Is traffic better now? Are services better or worse? Should growth be controlled?

The antidote for developer lies and confusion is public education. Please check out the video and sign up for our email list (see form near top of page) to learn more about the issues.

Join Us!

“The battle is on. San Benito County has all the amenities for ideal living. Outside developers are rushing in to take advantage of weak zoning. Development that could never get approved in surrounding counties. The only way little old San Benito County can fight back out-of-town developers is to seek help from out-of-town environmental organizations.”

—Retired Congressman Sam Farr represented California’s central Coast from 1993 to 2017 and passed legislation to make Pinnacles a national park.