Tilden Regional Park

View of Inspiration Point from the Nimitz Way, Tilden Regional Park, California

Tilden is named in honor of Charles Lee Tilden, a Bay Area industrialist who purchased much of the land in order to preserve remaining wilderness areas for public enjoyment.

The park is managed by the East Bay Regional Park District. Although it is largely located within Oakland or unincorporated areas of Contra Costa County, for almost the whole of its length it borders on Berkeley, in effect providing the eastern limit of the city. Although not particularly large (about 5 x 1 km, or 3 x 3/4 miles), it is a very important, and accessible, recreation area for Berkeley and the other municipalities of the East Bay. A bus service from the Berkeley BART station runs into the park at weekends. Its steep valleys and dense stands of timber mean that the closeness of the city is rarely obvious, while its high ridges and peaks give wide views over the San Francisco Bay and inland across other preserved land to Mount Diablo.

The park contains numerous trails, providing facilities for hiking, horse-riding and bicycling. In addition to major areas of wilderness, the park includes amusements such as a model farm, an environmentalal educational building, a golf course, miniature steam trains and a botanic garden. The eastern limit of the park is, approximately, the high point of the ridge of hills lining the east shores of San Francisco Bay, and the East Bay Skyline National Trail runs just inside the park. This ridge rises to a height of 369m (1211 feet) at Wildcat Peak at the north end of the park, and 581m (1905 feet) at Vollmer Peak at the south end.

Parts of the park land had been cleared for agricultural use, and in places exotic trees (especially eucalypts) have been planted. There are some relatively recently planted stands of Giant Sequoia. However, current conservation efforts are aimed at restoring native vegetation so far as possible, and significant parts of the park are covered in native coastal scrub.