Anthony Chabot Regional Park: a campground 20 minutes from downtown Oakland, and the tavern where a jazz revival began

Few big cities have a real campground this close. The East Bay Regional Park District says Anthony Chabot Regional Park is about 20 minutes from downtown Oakland. It covers the San Leandro Hills between Oakland, San Leandro and Castro Valley, with grasslands, chaparral and tall eucalyptus groves.

Camping

The Anthony Chabot Family Campground overlooks Lake Chabot. It has 53 drive-to tent sites, 10 walk-to tent sites and 12 RV and trailer sites with full hookups. Every site has a picnic table and a fire ring with a grill, and the restrooms have hot showers. The campground gates lock every night at 10 p.m. and reopen at 8 a.m., though campers can leave at any time. There are also seven group camps for groups of 35 to 300. One of them, Bort Meadow, allows equestrian camping. Group sites can't be booked online.

Trails

The East Bay Skyline National Trail runs the length of the park. It covers 31 miles of East Bay hills from Richmond to Castro Valley. A six-mile stretch of the Chabot-to-Garin Regional Trail connects the park to Cull Canyon. It crosses East Bay Municipal Utility District land, so you need an EBMUD hiking permit for that section. Trailheads are along Redwood Road and Skyline Boulevard. The park has two private equestrian centers, Chabot Equestrian Center and Skyline Ranch Equestrian Center, that offer boarding and lessons. Parking is free.

History

The land is ancestral territory of the Jalquin, an Ohlone and Bay Miwok-speaking tribe. In the 1840s it was split between Rancho San Lorenzo and Rancho San Antonio. The park opened in 1952 as Grass Valley Regional Park. In 1965 it was renamed for Anthony Chabot, who built Lake Chabot and Oakland's first public water system. All of the original coast redwoods here were logged, but many of the regrown trees are now more than 100 years old. The water companies that came before EBMUD planted the big eucalyptus groves starting around 1910.

Near today's Big Bear Staging Area on Redwood Road stood the Big Bear Tavern. In 1940, Lu Watters formed the Yerba Buena Jazz Band, and its jam sessions at the tavern drew crowds of up to 400 and helped start the traditional jazz revival. The Chabot Gun Club ran a marksmanship range in the park from 1963 until Sept. 5, 2016, when the park board voted unanimously to close it over lead contamination.

Next door: our Lake Chabot guide and Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park.