Morgan Territory Regional Preserve

37°49′5.92″N 121°47′45.18″W / 37.8183111°N 121.7958833°W / 37.8183111; -121.7958833

Morgan Territory Regional Preserve
Location	Contra Costa County, California
Nearest city	Clayton, California and Livermore, California
Area	5,230 acres (2,120 ha)
Created	1975
Operated by	East Bay Regional Park District

Morgan Territory Regional Preserve is a

The preserve was named for Morgan Territory, an historic name for the area associated with Anglo-American pioneer Jeremiah Morgan, who in 1856 acquired thousands of acres on the east side of Mount Diablo and developed a ranch.

Popular activities in the park are camping, hiking, horseback riding and picnicking. A reservation is required to use the backpacking campsite. This is not wheelchair accessible. Picnic sites are first come, first served. Dogs are allowed in the preserve and no fee is charged for their admittance.^[1]

Morgan Territory Regional Preserve now totals 5,230 acres (2,120 ha) and is one of the larger EBRPD (East Bay Regional Park District) holdings. The preserve extends on both sides of a creek. When developed parallel to the creek in 1892, Morgan Territory Road was named for pioneer Jeremiah Morgan's ranch. Today many of the preserve's trails branch off from this main road into the surrounding hills.^[2]

Other trails lead toward

There are camping areas where water is available and restrooms are located. Apart from the main staging area, an area with restrooms and a camping/picnic area can be found on Roger Epperson Ridge along the Highland Ridge Trail.[3]

According to the EBRPD, more than 90 species of wildflowers grow in Morgan Territory Regional Preserve. Particularly notable is the Diablo sunflower Helianthella castanea, which is native to the foothills of Mount Diablo. Fauna include deer, coyote, and occasionally a mountain lion.^[4]

This area on the east side of Mount Diablo was historically the homeland of the Volvon, one of five tribes in the region who spoke dialects of the Bay Miwok language and were encountered by Spanish explorers. The Spanish began exploring and colonizing the area east of San Francisco Bay in 1772, which resulted in wholesale changes to the world of the Volvon and other regional tribes.

Some members of the native tribes were killed outright by Spanish military confrontations. Others were relocated into Catholic missions and forced to change their traditional ways. Unsanitary conditions at the missions and exposure to new

Meanwhile, the King of Spain began dividing the land into enormous parcels that were granted to friends and supporters. Few of these grantees resided on their new grants, but subdivided them into smaller parcels which they gave or sold to others. After Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, it continued the practice of granting large ranchos to Californios on Bay Miwok homelands, beginning in the 1820s.^[5] Such lands were increasingly acquired by American immigrants from the United States, such as John Marsh in 1837 and Jeremiah Morgan in 1856.

The United States acquired California after defeating Mexico in the

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Manfred "Manny" Lindner of the Contra Costa Park Council helped lead efforts to establish a new regional preserve in Morgan Territory within the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD). To illustrate the proposal, he built a large, three-dimensional model of the main ridge and headwaters of Marsh Creek, which were the most prized areas. Hulet Hornbeck, Chief of Acquisitions for the EBRPD, collaborated with Lindner to persuade the District Board of Directors to create the Preserve. But many residents of the area had demonstrated little public interest or need of such a plan.

At the same time, some residents recognized the development pressures on the area and began to organize community groups to preserve natural areas. For instance, the non-profit Save Mount Diablo was founded in 1971. The population of the nearby Tri-Valley had already begun to increase, a trend that continued in the following decades, driven by expansion of technology firms and related businesses in the Silicon Valley and region. Land prices also increased throughout the area.^{[citation needed]}

In the late 1980s and early 1990s,

In 1989 Save Mount Diablo bought the 631-acre (2.6 km²) Morgan Territory Ranch from descendants of the pioneer settler, placed a conservation easement on it, and transferred the property to Mt. Diablo State Park for management. The ranch is adjacent to a corner of the Morgan Territory Preserve. ^[citation needed] Following that, in 1994 the state created the 30-mile (48 km) Diablo Trail, which runs across six parks from Walnut Creek to Brentwood.

In quick succession EBRPD acquired large, square-mile sections and added them to the Morgan Territory Preserve. In this same period, they preserved the 19,000-acre (77 km²) Los Vaqueros watershed to the east. EBRPD also acted to designate Round Valley as an adjoining Regional Preserve. It had been threatened by proposals by Contra Costa County to establish a landfill here.^{[citation needed]}

On April 17, 2015, EBRPD announced that it had acquired and added a 260 acres (110 ha) parcel of land, formerly known as the Viera farm, to the Morgan Territory Regional Preserve. The parcel is adjacent to

Prolonged heavy rains during the winter of 2016-2017 caused significant flooding and damage to park facilities, especially roads and trails. EBRPD posted a notice on its website that the Morgan Territory Backpack Camp would be closed from November 1, 2017 through March 1, 2018, for repairs,[4] but favorable weather allowed completion of the needed work to be completed earlier than expected. EBRPD announced on December 5, 2017 that the Morgan Territory Backpack Camp was reopened.

Morgan Territory

• McCreery, Laura. Living Landscape: The Extraordinary Rise of the East Bay Regional Park District and How It Preserved 100000 Acres, Birmingham, AL: Wilderness Press, 2010.

• Morgan Territory Regional Preserve—at the East Bay Parks District web site