The paved path that runs beside St. Mary's Road has carried redwood lumber, Gold Rush travelers, electric commuter trains and freight. In the 1950s it was also mapped for a four-lane freeway. Caltrans dropped Highway 77 for good in 1975. The East Bay Regional Park District dedicated the trail on July 4, 1976, and that dedication is the anniversary Lafayette celebrates on Saturday, October 10. The trail is now getting nine interpretive history panels. They're based on research by Lafayette resident Shane Reisman and supported by the Lafayette and Moraga historical societies. Together they make one argument about the route. It has been reused again and again as a way to get somewhere, and the version we walk today is the one the community chose.
| Era | What moved along the corridor | Where the panels tell it |
|---|---|---|
| 1800s | Mule trains carrying freshly milled redwood lumber | Reliez Station Road, Topper Lane |
| 1913 | Electric trains on the Sacramento Northern | Topper Lane, Glenside Drive |
| 1939 | The Comet and Meteor, running to San Francisco over the Bay Bridge | Glenside Drive |
| 1941 | Last passenger trains | Glenside Drive |
| 1950s | A proposed four-lane Shepherd Canyon Freeway, Highway 77 | Lafayette Community Center |
| 1957 | Last freight trains | Reliez Station Road, Glenside Drive |
| 1975 | Caltrans removes Highway 77 from future consideration | Lafayette Community Center |
| 1976 | Trail dedicated on July 4 | EBRPD records |
The Lafayette half, read north to south
The project website, lmhistorytrail.org, arranges the nine stops north to south from Olympic Boulevard to Valle Vista. The first four are on the Lafayette side. Walk them in order and each one moves the story forward a step.
- Reliez Station Road. The opening panel sets the scale. For centuries this path has linked Lafayette to Moraga and on to the redwoods of Canyon, and the panel compares that role to the one Highways 24 and 680 play today. The route was traveled on foot, then by horse, then by rail until 1957, and later by automobile.
- Topper Lane. This stop goes back to the redwood timber boom of the mid-1800s, when the route linked lumber mills in the Oakland hills with shipping ports in Martinez. In 1847, Lafayette town founder Elam Brown acquired the 3,329-acre Rancho Acalanes, a former Mexican land grant. Stores opened to serve locals and travelers, Gold Rush "49ers" among them. When electric trains arrived in 1913 they made several stops in Lafayette, which let local merchants sell to settlers, farmers and ranchers.
- Glenside Drive. This panel covers the commuter era. By 1939, riders could board the Sacramento Northern's daily Comet and Meteor right here and ride the lower-deck rails of the new Bay Bridge straight into San Francisco. The trains offered dining and parlor cars and reached speeds of 60 mph. The photo for this stop shows electric car No. 1014 at Glenside station in June 1941, days before passenger service ended.
- Lafayette Community Center. Here the panel tells the story of the freeway, covered in the next section.
The Glenside panel also explains how the trains disappeared. The Bay Bridge opened in 1936 and the new Caldecott Tunnel in 1937, and along with better roads for cars they pulled riders away from the line, whose costs had outpaced its revenue. Passenger service ended in 1941 and freight in 1957. The panel then makes the connection to today:
"With the 1974 opening of the Lafayette–Moraga Regional Trail, transit returned to the trail, but this time for pedestrians, bicyclists, and equestrians."
So in the panel's telling, today's trail is still a transportation route. The traffic now moves at walking speed.
The freeway that would have passed the play area
The Community Center stop sits where an old photograph shows a Sacramento Northern train crossing St. Mary's Road, near today's Florence Drive. Car ownership grew steadily from the 1920s on. In the 1950s, transportation officials proposed a four-lane freeway along today's trail corridor to serve drivers in nearby bedroom communities.
The panel describes the plan in detail. The Shepherd Canyon Freeway, Highway 77, would have come out of a tunnel from Oakland, cut through Moraga Valley and Burton Valley, passed just feet from the Community Center, and connected to Highway 24. The State planned to use eminent domain to make property owners sell the land it needed.
The plan ended in two steps. In 1972, after decades of community opposition and with BART service starting, the State Assembly removed the project from the State Highway Plan. In 1975, Caltrans removed Highway 77 from future consideration. The park district dedicated the trail on July 4, 1976. Those dates explain the anniversary. In the mid-1970s, the old rail line could have become a highway or a path, and it took the State until 1975 to formally rule out the highway.
Another panel is already up near the same stop. It covers how the Bay Miwok tribal group has lived with this land along the trail and beyond since time immemorial. You'll find it in the Community Center's native plant garden and parking lot, next to the children's play area.
The people who saw a bike route in an empty right-of-way
After World War II, cars and trucks replaced the railroads. The rails were abandoned and the corridor became a utility easement. The Lafayette Historical Society's anniversary post describes the old right-of-way after the last freight trains as sitting quietly for years, "waiting for a new purpose."
According to the Historical Society, that purpose came from two Lafayette women, Avon Wilson and Lynn Hiden, known as the "Bike Ladies." They pictured a safe place where children could ride bicycles away from busy streets. With help from Don Goode, Jerry Kent and other local leaders, the corridor became the Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail, which the Historical Society calls one of the nation's early Rails-to-Trails projects.
That account puts the trail's start with Lafayette residents rather than an agency. The project website says the same thing in its own way: in 1974, local communities partnered with the East Bay Regional Park District to turn the corridor into the paved path in use today.
Why the dates disagree
Sources differ by two years on when the trail began. The history website gives 1974 in two places: once for the partnership with the park district and once in the Glenside panel's line about the trail's "opening." The East Bay Regional Park District's own history dates the trail's dedication to July 4, 1976. The 2026 celebration counts its 50 years from the 1976 dedication. The simplest way to fit the two together is that 1974 marks the start of the conversion work and 1976 the formal opening, and the materials themselves don't contradict that reading. The Highway 77 dates fall between them, which suggests the trail took shape while the freeway plan was still being formally shut down.
What the full set of nine covers south of Lafayette
The Lafayette stops tell the transportation story. The five stops in Moraga cover older and broader history, which makes the full 7.65-mile route worth walking end to end at least once.
- Rheem Boulevard & St. Mary's Road: the valley's prehistoric sea, its geology, fossils and animal footprints
- Saint Mary's College: the school's arrival in Moraga, Navy pre-flight training during the war, and its later move to coeducation
- Moraga Commons: how ranching shaped the region's open land and its place names
- Moraga Country Club: the orchard and crop-farming years, when the Sacramento Northern shipped local fruit and vegetables
- Valle Vista: an early subdivision cleared for the Upper San Leandro Reservoir, whose foundations are still visible from nearby hiking trails
The website also links a map showing where the trail sat within the 1939 Sacramento Northern system. The project website describes the Sacramento Northern as a 183-mile electric interurban railway, one of the longest in North America.
Saturday, October 10, and the panels that come after
The anniversary gathering runs from 9 to 11 a.m. on Saturday, October 10, in the Jennifer Russell Building at the Lafayette Community Center, 500 St. Mary's Road. The presentation starts at 10, and light refreshments will be served. Visitors will see the panels before they go up along the trail. The City's September 25 roundup says the project was funded by the Moraga Community Foundation and the Community Foundation of Lafayette.
Don't expect to find all nine panels in place on your next walk. When Lafayette City Council discussed the proposal on August 11, 2025, the plan was for nine panels from the Olympic staging area to Valle Vista, with the park district deciding where each would stand and installing them. No installation date or final placement map has been published yet. Until it is, the website works as a stand-in, since each stop is posted with its archival photograph.
For walkers starting on the Lafayette end, the park district lists staging areas at Olympic Boulevard, Lucille Lane, St. Mary's Road and Moraga Road. The northern endpoint is at Pleasant Hill Road and Olympic Boulevard. The Lafayette Community Center has restrooms and drinking water, so it's a natural midpoint for the Lafayette stretch. The trail is paved, runs alongside St. Mary's Road, and is open to hikers, cyclists and equestrians.
Every house has its own history too, and at Shandrika Powell we like to present that history with the same care these panels bring to the old Sacramento Northern line. If you live near the trail and want to know what your home's story is worth today, request your free home valuation & staging plan.
