These lovely fall days are a great time to take a walk in our neighborhood! By including some of the stair paths in your route, you’ll get aerobic exercise and new perspectives at the same time.  

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Now is also the ideal time for neighbors of the eleven paths in the UCAN neighborhood — as well as those who use them — to pitch in to remove fallen leaves and debris from the stairs. Organic matter and trash can make them slippery when the rains come and also can obscure trip hazards. In addition, cleaning the paths can be a family-friendly activity or an excellent community service project. Feel free to pitch in anytime. 

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If you would like additional information you can contact the Public Spaces Committee by writing publicspaces@uplandsclaremont.com.  Some paths need repairs that only the city can tackle. You can report unsafe conditions on any of the stair paths by dialing 311 or by filing a request online.

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UCAN's Public Spaces Committee greatly appreciates your help in keeping our pathways clear and safe.  In hopes of further inspiring our community to care for them, we would like to share some of their quaint history.

 

History of our Neighborhood Pathways

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Like Harwood Creek that meanders through our UCAN area, the public stairways and footpaths that criss-cross our streets are a distinctive feature of our neighborhood. They provide shortcuts to shops, John Muir School, public transportation, and other amenities. And, importantly, they can serve as emergency evacuation routes for residents and access routes for first responders during fast-moving fires or when streets are blocked or damaged. This is yet another important reason to remove organic matter from the steps and to keep weeds, plants, and tree branches from encroaching on the sides of the paths.

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Eleven named and numbered city-owned paths lie within UCAN’s boundaries (Oakridge Path [#132] has two sections, divided by Domingo Avenue, but only one number). In addition, we have Long Path, which divides The Uplands and Parkside and runs from Claremont Avenue almost to the end of Parkside Drive, as well as two short stairways that link Long Path and Parkside. Although these three are not part of Berkeley’s official path network, they lie on public property and are heavily used.

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Our paths were built around 1905 when the Mason-McDuffie Company developed the Claremont-Uplands neighborhood, marketing it as a “private residence park.” With the exception of Long Path, our paths are ten-foot wide* public rights-of-way, with concrete steps and paved ramps or footways (*the lower portion of The Footway, #126, is wider because it once was Claremont’s “grand stairway.” Designed by John Galen Howard, it featured a fancy, enclosed pavilion at the bottom, and its steps led up to a second-story, shaded belvedere. This structure was demolished in 1958).

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Each path has a double sign at both ends, showing both its name and the name of the street it meets. Identifying those streets is important because all our paths begin and end in the middle of blocks, where ordinarily there would be no street signs. 

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Berkeley Path Wanderers Association (BPWA)  publishes an excellent map, Berkeley and Its Pathways, which shows the location of all 135 of the city-owned paths, the Ohlone Greenway, some of the lower paths in Tilden, and those on campus. Some 25 years ago, BPWA’s founders included this description on the first edition of the map:

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"The pathways remain with us, a reminder of Berkeley’s early days. To the harried urban resident, the pathways offer leafy garden corridors of quiet, removed from the world or noise beyond …[D]ay after day, as informal extensions of Berkeley’s parks, the pathways give us more ways to enjoy the outdoors."