Robert Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve

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Robert Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve is located in the Berkeley Hills just east of Oakland, California, USA. Though it can only be entered via Oakland, it actually lies almost entirely within Contra Costa County.

The park was one of the first three parks established by the East Bay Regional Parks District (EBRPD) in 1936. It was originally named Round Top Regional Park. Round Top (elevation 1,761 feet/537m) is an extinct volcano in the Berkeley Hills. It is home to several stone labyrinths of recent origin.

The park was re–named to honor, the second president of the EBRPD (1948 to 1958), Robert Sibley, shortly after his death in 1958, and who also had helped found the District and served for 10 years on its board of directors. A Regional Park founder (along with then Berkeley City Manager, Hollis Thompson) and hiking enthusiast, Sibley enjoyed hiking in this park, which at that time named Round Top Regional Park. His active career spanned the realms of education, business, writing and editing. His friends called him “a visionary who made his visions come true.” That was his genius, and it lives on in the vast acres of the East Bay Regional Parks.

The preserve contains a volcanic center that, about 10 million years ago, produced most of the lavas that underlie the East Bay ridges from Inspiration Point in Tilden Regional Park to Moraga; geologists refer to this local volcanism as the Moraga Volcanics. Subsequent compressive strains produced by various local faults including the Hayward Fault folded the lava-bearing rock formations, tilting the Round Top vent complex on its side. Folding, erosion, and a quarry operation exposed a cross section of the great volcano, providing an excellent means to study a Central Coast range volcano. Lava within the vent has been dated by UC Berkeley at 9.5 million years old.

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