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Waterfall, Grotto Greet Hikers On Tamalpais Path

The path starts a few yards from the house where Depression Era documentary photographer Dorothea Lange lived and worked with her husband, economist Paul Taylor. Tamalpais Road resident Paul Schwarz says the steps have been trod by figures with names that adorn the University of California—Sproul, Wurster, Lawrence.

Like many of the paths in the North Berkeley hills, Tamalpais was laid out in the early 1920s.

Helen Dixon, who lives in what was once her mother-in-law Dorothea Lange’s studio, said the byway was originally used for residents to descend the hill to the Euclid Avenue streetcar, which stopped running in the 1940s, along with other electric streetcars in Berkeley.

These days, she hears schoolchildren use it to get to and from their buses on Euclid. “But I’m protected here by the trees, so I don’t see a lot of the traffic,” she said.

At the top of the path’s first flight of stairs, a worn wooden gate hangs from an ivy-covered fence. The gate guards a trail across Emily Benner’s land, and a section of the north fork of Codornices Creek, a waterfall, the remains of a fern grotto, and a small canyon.

“My in-laws purchased the property in 1933, or ’34, in the middle of the Depression, when if you had even a little money, it went a long way,” said Benner, 67, a long-time Sierra Club member.

Her sense of stewardship owes something to memories of her late neighbor, David Brower—former director of the Sierra Club and founder of the Earth Island Institute—who lived up the hill on Stevenson Road.

In the Sierra Club tradition, she preserves her land as open space. Though it is private property, neighbors sometimes use its paths to reach the Tamalpais steps from Keith Road above the north side of the canyon and creek.

The sound of the creek and the sight of the canyon offer a respite to those who climb the path. Toward the top, the steps become steep and narrow, where a handrail offers assistance. The ascent is worth the effort, however, for the top offers a view through redwood trees to Mount Tamalpais itself. That is, of course, as long as the fog cooperates.