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◆ Point Pinole Regional Shoreline ◆

BAY VIEW TRAIL

Length: 5.2 miles

Time: 2 to 3 hours

Rating: Moderate

Regulations: EBRPD; fees for parking and dogs; dogs not allowed on fishing pier and must be leashed at all times.

Facilities: Picnic tables, water, toilet, phone, children’s play area. A shuttle van from the parking area to a fishing pier at the end of Point Pinole runs daily except Tuesdays and Wednesdays; there is a small fee, but seniors, the disabled, and children under age 6 ride free. Dogs are not allowed on the shuttle. The shuttle leaves the parking area at half past every hour beginning at 7:30 A.M. Return trips leave the pier turnaround area at a quarter past every hour. The last trip back to the parking area is at 3 P.M.

Directions: From Interstate 80 in Pinole, take the Richmond Parkway/Fitzgerald Dr. exit and follow Richmond Pkwy. west 1.9 miles to the Giant Highway exit. After exiting, go 0.3 mile to a stop sign, turn right, and go another 0.2 mile to Giant Highway. Turn right and follow Giant Highway as it jogs left, crosses railroad tracks, and jogs right for a total of 0.7 mile to the park entrance, left. Go 0.1 mile to the entrance kiosk, then turn left into the parking area. The trailhead is at the northwest corner of parking area.

Point Pinole juts north like a thumb into San Pablo Bay, and the more than 10 miles of easy trails through its marshlands, grassy fields, and groves of eucalyptus offer a sanctuary from the almost continuous industrial and residential development stretching along the East Bay shoreline from San Leandro to the Carquinez Bridge. This loop trip follows The Bay View Trail to the tip of the point, then returns via the Marsh and Cook’s Point trails.

History buffs will especially enjoy this hike, because Point Pinole was the location of a large explosives manufacturing industry, which, from 1880 to 1960, turned out 2 billion pounds of dynamite. A few remnants, in the form of sunken bunkers and half-buried railroad ties, of this dangerous yet prosperous enterprise are still visible. Before starting out, you might take a moment to visit a commemorative plaque, just west of the entrance kiosk and beyond the parking-area fence, which designates Point Pinole a California Historical Landmark and tells more about the area’s unique history.

Leave the parking area and walk north along the left of two paved roads that soon join (the right one is used by a shuttle van ferrying people to the fishing pier). Turn left to cross a bridge over railroad tracks. Just past the bridge, turn left again and follow the Bay View Trail, here a dirt path, leading downhill through a grove of eucalyptus, Point Pinole’s dominant tree, to Parchester Marsh, a large expanse of pickleweed and other marsh plants at the edge of San Pablo Bay. The Bay View Trail is part of the San Francisco Bay Trail, a planned route, about half of which has been completed, which someday will encircle the Bay. As you come out into the open, past large toyon bushes, you can see Mt. Tamalpais and the Marin County shoreline across the bay, and, closer at hand, the industrial areas of Richmond.

San Francisco and San Pablo bays combined are one of the largest wintering grounds in the United States for migratory shorebirds, with an estimated one million visiting here each year. It is also the most important stop on the Pacific Flyway, a migration route between northern breeding grounds and wintering areas in Southern California, Mexico, and Central and South America. The bays are visited by a number of threatened and endangered species, such as brown pelican, least tern, and snowy plover, and its salt marshes are home to two endangered ones, clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse.

Upon reaching the upper edge of the marsh, you come to a T-junction with a broad dirt path; here you turn right and walk past a small sandy beach, then through another fragrant eucalyptus grove. As you pass the Cook’s Point Trail (COOKES on the trail post), right, be on the lookout for hummingbirds and, especially in winter, beautiful orange-and-black monarch butterflies. If the tide has exposed the mud flats to your left, look with binoculars or a spotting scope for feeding shorebirds. Once in a while, a northern harrier will cruise by, causing panic and putting up the birds. Farther out in the bay, you may see rafts of ducks floating on the water.

The route, parallel to the shoreline, is open here, with no shade and no protection from the wind. Just past the 0.5-mile point, a rest bench, left, invites you to sit for a moment and look out over San Pablo Bay. In the East Bay, access by foot to the shoreline is prevented in many places by levees, highways, and industrial development, so it is a pleasure to be able to walk down to the water’s edge, which you can do at several points on this loop. Partially exposed railroad ties indicate that this section of the route was probably used to transport explosives. According to the EBRPD brochure, Point Pinole was crisscrossed with “a system of two broad-gauge and extensive narrow-gauge rail lines.” Electric and gas-operated locomotives were used to transport dynamite over these rail lines between manufacturing plants, storage areas, and a shipping pier, which was east of the present-day fishing pier.

Just past a beach-access point, you turn right and follow the Bay View Trail as it climbs gently through a grove of eucalyptus, while the path you’ve been on goes straight, through a fence guarding a restricted area. At a T-junction, your route, now a dirt road, turns left and continues in the shade, soon passing two unsigned roads, less than 0.1 mile apart, on the right. After a brief descent, you reach a four-way junction. The path that went into the restricted area now rejoins your route from the left, and another road goes right. As you continue straight, you pass through an area where EBRPD has used fire to maintain the health of the eucalyptus growing here and remove forest floor debris.

At about the 1.3-mile point, you reach a fork and a cement bunker, another reminder of the area’s dynamite days. Take the left-hand fork and soon reach a bluff. Here a rest bench overlooks the bay, and an access path winds down to a gravel beach, perhaps inhabited by a snowy egret. Old wood pilings, more reminders of Point Pinole’s past, jut out of the water close to shore. A lone California buckeye and a hillside of California sagebrush, coyote brush, poison oak, and lupine add variety to the plant life.

Just past the bluff, near a clearing planted with pines, your road is joined by another coming from the right. Now you pass several more rest benches, and soon you can see across Point Pinole—an expanse of meadows and eucalyptus—to the east edge of San Pablo Bay. With the fishing pier in sight, you leave the Bay View Trail as it turns right, and continue straight on a narrow trail along the edge of cliffs overlooking the water. Near the present pier are the remains of a much older shipping wharf used by dynamite manufacturers.

Following the trail around the tip of Point Pinole, you soon join a paved path coming from the fishing pier, and turn south through a picnic area, where water and toilets are available. Just past the shuttle bus turn-around, you leave pavement and bear left on the Marsh Trail, a gravel road; Whittell Marsh, habitat for herons, egrets, and shorebirds, is left. After passing through a four-way junction, you can see another historical remnant, the Dynamite Blast and Burning Bunker, in the marsh. A fresh-water pond bordered by cattails marks an upcoming junction, where the gravel road, now called Owl Alley, continues straight, and your route, the Marsh Trail, a wide dirt path, turns left. (Both lead to the Cook’s Point Trail, your return route.)

Turn left and follow the Marsh Trail as it winds past a rest bench along the upland edge of Whittell Marsh, with eucalyptus and acacia bordering your route. In the fall portions of this pickleweed marsh turn brilliant ruby red. Just past the 3-mile point, you come to a rest bench and a junction with the Cook’s Point Trail, a dirt road. Just east of the junction is a machine used in making explosives—a black-powder press. From this junction, go sharply left to stay on the Marsh Trail. Near the edge of San Pablo Bay is a T-junction. Turn left again and follow the Marsh Trail to its dead end overlooking Whittell Marsh, where a beautiful view extends northwest past the tip of Point Pinole to the hills of Marin County.

Now return to the previous junction, turn right, and retrace your route to the junction of the Marsh and Cook’s Point trails, near the black-powder press. (To explore more of the shoreline, go straight from the junction mentioned at the start of this paragraph on a short connector that leads to the Cook’s Point Trail, which traces the shoreline east for a short distance. After these wanderings, retrace your route to the junction of the Marsh and Cook’s Point trails.)

Now follow the Cook’s Point Trail southwest, through a corridor of eucalyptus. At the junction with Owl Alley, you pass the ranger’s residence and continue straight, now on broken pavement, until you reach a fork in the route. Take the right-hand fork and climb slightly on solid pavement, passing a junction, left, with a gravel road. A few feet beyond, you reach another junction; here a paved road goes right and uphill, but your route, now a gravel path, bends left. Ahead you can see a picnic area and children’s play equipment. Just past the 4.5-mile point, you cross paved Point Pinole Road, which goes from the parking area to the fishing pier. Continue straight, now on a dirt path in a ravine, and walk downhill toward the water, enjoying a view of Mt. Tamalpais rising in the distance. About 0.3 mile past Point Pinole Road, you come to a trail post which points you left to the parking area. Ignore this, and continue toward the water, soon joining the Bay View Trail. From here, turn left and retrace your route to the parking area.