Vintage Views: Mount Diablo – Walnut Creek, Then and Now

Tinkering around with some of the raw vintage imagery that forms the backbone of my wife, photographer Sarah Anne Bettelheim, and my ongoing Vintage Views: Mount Diablo series, I stumbled into creating a sort of frozen-in-time machine, blended (mash-up?) view of Mount Diablo overlooking Walnut Creek that spans a century, capturing the growth of our East Bay Area at the toe of the mountain’s slopes.

Framed below a contemporary dusting of snow on Mount Diablo’s summit, this composite photograph reveals how the comparatively open (and undeveloped) oak savannah grasslands and farmland of 1909 (left) give up the ghost in little more than a century to the present-day (2012) urban residential redoubt of Walnut Creek (right) where the city sprawls guarded beneath a canopy of ornamental trees. Though Walnut Creek has clearly grown, the urban growth surrounding Mount Diablo’s foothills has nevertheless been held at bay due in no small part to the hard work of groups like Save Mount Diablo.

This is a departure from the Vintage Views: Mount Diablo series, but an interesting exercise in telling Mount Diablo’s story.

To help support the San Francisco Bay Area non-profit organization Save Mount Diablo, whose mission is “to preserve Mount Diablo’s peaks, surrounding foothills, and watersheds”, every year Sarah Anne Photography donates a Vintage View to the annual “Moonlight on the Mountain” full-moon fete and auction. Visit www.savemountdiablo.org to learn more about how you can help protect Mount Diablo.

Vintage Views: Mount Diablo – Walnut Creek IV

With Save Mount Diablo’s Moonlight on the Mountain auction fast approaching (September 8, 2012), I’ve once again taken up collaborating with my wife, photographer Sarah Anne Bettelheim, on the next in our ongoing Vintage Views: Mount Diablo series, which involves pairing historical imagery of the San Francisco Bay Area’s iconic Mount Diablo (Contra Costa County, CA.) with contemporary photographs taken from the same vantage point.

Our most recent collaboration – Vintage Views: Mount Diablo – Walnut Creek IV – recreates the view of a vintage postcard that gazes out over downtown Walnut Creek. Across the horizon (from right to left, beginning with the main mount) loom the peaks of Mount Diablo’s Summit, North Peak, Eagle Peak, and Mount Olympia. In Mount Diablo’s foothills can be seen Shell Ridge and the sentinel sandstone rock formations of Mount Diablo State Park’s “Rock City,” once known more familiarly as the “Garden of the Jungle Gods.” Rock City’s foundations are riddled with turrets, wind caves, and grottos carved by the elements, and include Sentinel Rock and Elephant Rock. Between 1909 – when the original vintage postcard was mailed – and the present, Walnut Creek’s growth is evident as it expanded into the outlying farmland. Also noticeable is the transition from the relatively open oak savannah grassland and farmland in 1909 to a present-day cover of urban residential communities overlain with ornamental trees. This urban growth has been stalled from advancing further upslope due in no small part to the hard work of groups like Save Mount Diablo, which alone has protected over 100,00 acres of open space surrounding the mountain since 1971.

In the coming months, we’ll be adding new views and new historical imagery to match. Stay tuned…

To help support the San Francisco Bay Area non-profit organization Save Mount Diablo, whose mission is “to preserve Mount Diablo’s peaks, surrounding foothills, and watersheds”, every year Sarah Anne Photography donates a Vintage View to the annual “Moonlight on the Mountain” full-moon fete and auction. Visit www.savemountdiablo.org to learn more about how you can help protect Mount Diablo.

Vintage Views: Mount Diablo

Over the last few years, I’ve been collaborating with my wife, photographer Sarah Anne Bettelheim, on what has come to be known as the Vintage Views: Mount Diablo project, which involves pairing historical imagery of the San Francisco Bay Area’s iconic Mount Diablo (Contra Costa County, CA.) with contemporary photographs taken from the same vantage point. Sister projects currently underway in the same vein include Vintage Views: Animalia and Botanica.

In Vintage Views: Mount Diablo, for example (right), we started with an early 1900′s stereoview image of a prominent spine known as Devils Slide, which erupts along Black Hawk Ridge in Mount Diablo’s Black Hills, overlooking the East Fork of Sycamore Creek. This prominent relief feature, a vertical bed of Miocene rock some 23.7-5.3 million years old, is an example of a homoclinal ridge or strike ridge – more commonly known as a “hogback ridge” – wherein the soil strata are deeply tilted and exhibit near-symmetry in cross-section. In the distance, the peak Knob Point can be seen. Since the stereoview was made (presumed to be in the 1920’s or 1930’s), evidence of a shift in vegetation communities is evident on both the north-facing slope (from chaparral to oak woodland) and the south-facing slope (from grassland to chaparral), where a game trail appears to have survived the test of time.

The project’s views of Mount Diablo vary, ranging from the upthrust bulk of Devils Slide described above to an expansive view of Walnut Creek from the surrounding hills to a distant portrait overlooking Concord and Cowell to the bucolic vista to be seen from Marsh Creek Road. The historical snapshots of Mount Diablo are captured in matchbooks, postcards, pamphlets, maps, photographs, poster stamps, pen and ink, and stereoviews dating back to to the late 1800′s.

The final Vintage View includes a facsimile or original historical image paired with Sarah Anne’s original photography. It is up to you to first pick from Sarah’s selection of contemporary photographs, and then pick an original or fascimile historical image to accompany your photograph. All Vintage Views are printed in a *limited run* of 25 fascimile historical images; on rare occasions, select Vintage Views are available paired with an original, genuine historical image (when available). Each finished Vintage View is mounted behind acid-free museum matboard and archival UV glass and includes a laminated legend to help decipher the story behind each view.

Across the seasons and over the years, our view of Mount Diablo continues to evolve. Woods give way to towns and gardens, seeds take root, rock faces weather. But the silhouette and the spirit of Mount Diablo remain intact, fixtures that span the horizon and the years.

In the coming months, we’ll be adding new views and new historical imagery to match. Stay tuned…

To help support the San Francisco Bay Area non-profit organization Save Mount Diablo, whose mission is “to preserve Mount Diablo’s peaks, surrounding foothills, and watersheds”, every year Sarah Anne Photography donates a Vintage View to the annual “Moonlight on the Mountain” full-moon fete and auction. Visit www.savemountdiablo.org to learn more about how you can help protect Mount Diablo.