Description

Site of the former Claretian Monastery, Lot 25 has been planted with over a hundred live oaks and valley oaks and has potential to be a neighborhood entry way to Mt Diablo State Park. 

After 10 years of work, we protected a significant missing link of Mount Diablo Creek. Beginning in 2003, we worked with the city of Clayton on a development project: 24-lot Diablo Pointe. A remaining parcel, “Lot 25,” is five acres, including a section of creek. Its preservation is important and precedent-setting in several ways.

During the development planning process, we focused on protection of the creek corridor, oak woodland, and a canyon along the eastern boundary as well as buffers to the state park on the east and south. The most significant precedent in the agreement with the developer was that a caretaker house along the creek was to be removed and the riparian corridor replanted.

On December 21, 2004, the redesigned Diablo Pointe project was approved. When the developer asked the state park to accept Lot 25 in 2011, the park rejected the offer due to budget cuts.

We then worked with the developer and the city to transfer the property to Save Mount Diablo for preservation. We will take care of the property until Mount Diablo State Park is able to accept it as part of the Park.

The property has a high-quality, incised rock bottom, as well as 500 feet of Mount Diablo Creek with intact riparian vegetation including maple, cottonwood, sycamore, oak, buckeye, and willow trees. It is lovely and overgrown, shifting between pools of water and rocky ripples.

The old house site and flat area along the creek are now studded with 150 protected live and valley oak trees that were planted to restore the creek corridor.

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

All green areas are protected lands. The section in red is Save Mount Diablo’s Lot 25 which had a previously unprotected segment of Mt. Diablo Creek.