About the Project

Construction on the Edward R. Campbell Bridge is completed! Visit the Arroyo entrance at Sycamore Grove Park and see the new all-season addition as well as the extension of the Arroyo del Valle Regional Trail. You can also see the commemorative stones, benches, wall tiles, and tree markers commemorating the incredible supporters of this amazing project.

No Longer the End of the Trail

For 75,000 visitors each year to beloved Sycamore Grove Park, the trail no longer ends when the Arroyo del Valle Regional Trail dead-ends into Arroyo del Valle. Instead, you can continue on all the way to Mission Peak in Fremont! 

You and your fellow supporters helped connect the Tri-Valley’s trails, increasing recreational opportunities and wildlife corridors while solidifying our lovely community as a destination—come for the wine, stay for the trails! We call it the Valley Trail Connections program and thanks to our partners and supporters like you, we have finished our connection in Sycamore Grove Park.

Nearly 25,000 acres of open space will be linked together through five parks—Sycamore Grove Park, Del Valle Regional Park, Ohlone Regional Wilderness, Sunol Regional Wilderness, and Mission Peak Regional Preserve.

Why

By connecting a dead-end trail in Sycamore Grove Park, one of our easiest to reach open spaces, recreational opportunities will increase exponentially. It will become part of a continuous 44-mile regional trail. You’ll have more than 17 times the trails to explore from your doorstep through the five linked parks. Trail access will open up for equestrians, cyclists, strollers, and people with disabilities to enjoy too. Wildlife will also have the interconnected habitat they need to survive. The payoff from this project has been huge, and it’s been years in the making.

How

For nearly two decades, you have helped bring the pieces together to make this possible. In 2014, you helped us preserve the Bobba Property between Sycamore Grove Park and Del Valle Regional Preserve. That land has been preserved forever and added 74 more acres to Sycamore Grove Park. However, Arroyo del Valle runs between the Arroyo Road staging area of Sycamore Grove Park and these new acres on the backside of the park.

Previously, the only safe way to cross the creek was on a footbridge that was only available when conditions allow. Due to high creek flows in the Winter and Spring, the footbridge was removed completely. Now, the Edward R. Campbell Bridge allows bikes, wheelchairs, strollers, or horses access to the other side of the creek and the rest of the park all year round. The bridge connects the trail year-round, improves trail access for all park users, and decreases impacts to the creek, which will help wildlife to thrive in the park and keep the water cleaner.

Thank you to our partners in the Livermore Area Recreation and Park District, Zone 7 Water District, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California State Water Resources, and the Army Corps of Engineers, just to name a few.

When

Thanks to you and our partners, the trail and new bridge are completed as of December 2019!

 

 

You can watch a video about the Valley Trail Connections project here!

 Project Gallery

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1 Minute Video

Funding the Connection

Your Name Here

Thank you to all that helped us fund the connection! Whether it was for yourself or to honor someone near and dear to you, these names are forever engraved along this creekside trail. Your gift helped support this project and will continue to provide comfort to parkgoers for generations to come!

RESTING BENCH

TREE MARKER

MOSAIC TILE

GRANITE TILE

 

Benefiting the Next Generation

Spending time outdoors keeps us healthier. Do you remember playing outside until mom called you in for dinner? Most kids today won’t. Over the last 20 years, childhood has moved indoors. Boys and girls spend as little as 30 minutes playing outside a day but more than 7 hours a day in front of a screen. There’s a reason they call it the great outdoors. Research confirms what many of us already knew, nature is good for us and gives us both mental and physical health benefits.

Studies show many of the major health problems on the rise among youth, such as obesity, ADHD, depression, and poor vision, could be improved by spending more time outdoors. Getting children outside and providing them a natural environment will increase attention spans, creative thought, and the desire to learn through exploration, making for healthier and happier kids. That’s exactly what we’re doing through Valley Trail Connections.

By connecting Tri-Valley parks and open spaces together by trails, we’ll all have more options to explore, exercise and adventure! Connecting parks and open space isn’t just good for us, it’s great for plants and wildlife too so they can get the water, food, shelter, travel or finding that special someone to continue the species with.

Our first phase of Valley Trail Connections will connect Sycamore Grove Park to Del Valle which will open up trail access from Livermore to Fremont. But we can’t do it without you.
Help us link parks through trails for you and future generations to enjoy!

Partners

Enormous thanks to our visionary partners for helping to make Valley Trail Connections a reality with our first connection between Sycamore Grove Park and Del Valle Regional Park:

Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty

Alameda County Transportation Commission
Altamont Open Space
Bay Area Barns and Trails
California State Coastal Conservancy
Chevron
City of Livermore
Dean Witter Foundation
East Bay Regional Park District
Friends of Open Space and Vineyards
Livermore Area Recreation & Park District
Sierra Club
Teichert
The Joseph & Vera Long Foundation
Zone 7 Water Agency

 

Partners in Preservation

A huge thank you to Turn5 for their support of the preservation of our parks through trail maintenance with their ExtremeTerrain’s Clean Trail Grant Program