The Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail turned 50 this summer. The East Bay Regional Park District dedicated it on July 4, 1976, at the Lafayette Community Center end of the route. This Saturday, October 10, the anniversary gets its public celebration. Nine new interpretive history panels will be shown in the Jennifer Russell Building at 500 St. Mary's Road before they go up along the trail. One of them sits at the Community Center stop. It says the state once planned a four-lane freeway on this same corridor, "passing just feet from this spot."
The paved path between Olympic Boulevard and Valle Vista has always carried traffic of some kind. The history the signs tell is about how close it came to carrying cars.
One strip of land, used three times
The corridor is older than either town's street grid. Here is the sequence the new History Trail lays out, with the Park District's dedication date added.
| Year | What happened on the corridor |
|---|---|
| 1800s | Mule trains carry freshly milled redwood lumber |
| 1913 | Mule routes become an electric railway, part of the 183-mile Sacramento Northern line |
| 1939 | Comet and Meteor trains run from Glenside Drive to San Francisco over the Bay Bridge's lower deck |
| 1941 | Passenger service ends |
| 1950s | State proposes the Shepherd Canyon Freeway, Highway 77, along the route |
| 1957 | Last freight trains run |
| 1972 | State Assembly removes the freeway from the State Highway Plan |
| 1974 | Local communities partner with the Park District to convert the corridor |
| 1975 | Caltrans drops Highway 77 from future consideration |
| 1976 | Trail dedicated on July 4 |
The History Trail website calls 1974 the trail's opening year. The Park District's own marker gives July 4, 1976, as the dedication date. The 50th anniversary counts from the 1976 dedication.
The table shows how short the gap was between the two plans for the corridor. Caltrans dropped Highway 77 in 1975, and the trail was dedicated the following summer.
The freeway the Community Center panel describes
Stop 4 of the new History Trail is titled "Changing Transportation." Its text is the most surprising of the nine:
In the 1950s, transportation officials proposed a four-lane freeway along today's Lafayette–Moraga Regional Trail to serve drivers in nearby bedroom communities. This "Shepherd Canyon Freeway," or Highway 77, would exit a tunnel from Oakland, bisect Moraga Valley and Burton Valley, passing just feet from this spot, to connect drivers to Highway 24.
The panel adds that the state planned to use eminent domain to buy the land along the route. According to the panel, two things ended the project: decades of community opposition and the start of BART service. The Assembly took it out of the State Highway Plan in 1972, and Caltrans retired it for good in 1975.
The freeway would have followed the same alignment the railroad had left behind. That is the same flat, continuous right-of-way that made the corridor easy to pave for walkers and cyclists. The panel's Glenside Drive neighbor, Stop 3, describes the trail's 1974 opening as the moment "transit returned to the trail, but this time for pedestrians, bicyclists, and equestrians."
The people who claimed the corridor first
The idea came from the ground up. In the early 1970s, two Lafayette women, Avon Wilson and Lynn Hiden, began pushing for safe off-street routes so children could get to local schools. They became known as the "Bike Ladies." Former Lafayette Mayor Donn Black helped bring Lafayette, Moraga and the Park District together on a nine-member Trails Advisory Committee to look at possible routes. In the Park District's words, "All eyes turned toward the abandoned Sacramento-Northern Railroad line."
The Lafayette Historical Society also credits Don Goode and Jerry Kent with the effort. Kent later retired as the Park District's chief of operations. The Park District spells Goode's name "Don Good" on its own interpretive marker.
The Park District calls the trail one of the first Rails-to-Trails projects in the country. It also says the trail helped start the district's regional trail system, which has since grown to 250 miles of paved, multi-use routes. According to the Lafayette Historical Society, thousands of people now walk, run, bike and ride horseback along the old train route.
What each of the nine stops will say
The panels cover the 7.65-mile corridor from Olympic Boulevard to the Valle Vista staging area. The Moraga Historical Society's newsletter rounds the length to 7.5 miles. The first four stops are in Lafayette. Read north to south:
- Reliez Station Road, "A Tapestry of Time and Place." This stop introduces a route that people traveled on foot, by horse, by rail until 1957, and then by car.
- Topper Lane, "Local Commerce Through Time and Space." This stop covers town founder Elam Brown's purchase of the 3,329-acre Rancho Acalanes in 1847 and the stores that grew up to serve travelers, Gold Rush "49ers" among them.
- Glenside Drive, "Rapid Transit to Strolling, Rolling, and Riding." The Comet and Meteor trains stopped here. They offered dining and parlor cars, ran at up to 60 mph, and made the San Francisco–Sacramento trip in under three hours.
- Lafayette Community Center, "Changing Transportation." This is the Highway 77 panel. A separate panel nearby, in the Community Center's native plant garden next to the children's play area, covers the Bay Miwok people's history on this land.
- Rheem Boulevard and St. Mary's Road, "Prehistoric Life." This panel covers fossil snails, clams and sand dollars from an ancient inland sea, plus traces of short-faced bears, bison and mastodons.
- Saint Mary's College, "Tradition of Excellence and Transformation." The college arrived in 1927 on land from James Irvine's Moraga Company, and classes began in 1928.
- Moraga Commons, "Ranching." This stop tells the story of the 13,316-acre Rancho Laguna de los Palos Colorados, granted in 1841 to Joaquin Moraga and Juan Bernal.
- Moraga Country Club, "Local Agribusiness." Moraga became one of the largest Bartlett pear producers in the United States, and the Sacramento Northern shipped its produce around the country.
- Valle Vista, "A Lost Community." Moraga's first subdivision was razed after 1924 to make way for the 500-acre Upper San Leandro Reservoir. Hiking trails along its old roadways still pass the home foundations.
The last stop is the earlier version of the Highway 77 story. In the 1920s, a regional infrastructure plan did reclaim the land, and Valle Vista's homes were removed. Fifty years later, the Shepherd Canyon Freeway was stopped before it could do the same to the valley.
Saturday's preview, and why the signs aren't up yet
Lafayette resident Shane Reisman researched and led the panel project. The Lafayette and Moraga historical societies and the Park District supported the work. At an August 2025 City Council meeting, Reisman said the Park District would build and install the signs at a cost of about $10,000. Genealogist Susan Skilton reviewed drafts. The Community Foundation of Lafayette and the Moraga Community Foundation paid for the project.
The schedule has slipped. The Moraga Historical Society's second-quarter 2026 newsletter expected the panels to be finished by the end of June. The City's October 2 roundup still invites residents to "preview new interpretive history panels before they are installed." No new installation date has been announced. Until the signs go up, all nine stories are on lmhistorytrail.org, along with archival photos from the Western Railway Museum and the Moraga Historical Society.
The open house runs from 9 to 11 a.m. on Saturday, with a presentation at 10 a.m. and light refreshments.
Walking the trail this month
East Bay Regional Park District scheduled repaving between South Lucille Lane and Rheem Boulevard from August 27 to September 3, 2026. The Lucille Lane Staging Area was closed during the work. The posted notices gave the end date, but none of the sources reviewed confirms the work was finished. Check with the Park District before planning a ride through that stretch.
The trail is also one of the routes in the Park District's 2026 Trails Challenge. Participants finish five trails or 26.2 miles and turn in their logs by December 31.
Two other October dates are close to the trail's Lafayette end:
- Res Run for Education, Sunday, October 18, 7:30 to 10:30 a.m., with 5K, 10K and two-mile events from the Lafayette Chamber.
- Trick or Treat Street, Friday, October 30, 4 to 6 p.m., along Mt. Diablo Boulevard, Lafayette Circle and La Fiesta Square.
Once the panels are installed, the Community Center stop will mark the spot where the state planned to run Highway 77 and where the trail was dedicated in 1976 instead.
Julie Whitmer has followed Lafayette and Moraga long enough to know that open space like this corridor shapes how homes along St. Mary's Road are valued and lived in. If you own near the trail and are weighing a renovation or a future sale, schedule a complimentary home strategy call. We can walk through what your property's setting adds and how to present it.