In June 1941, Sacramento Northern electric car No. 1014 stood at Glenside station in Lafayette. Within days, passenger service on the line would end. A photograph of that car is one of the images chosen for a new set of history panels on the Lafayette-Moraga Regional Trail. The panels are set to go up along the 7.7-mile path as it marks its 50th anniversary.
The Glenside panel points past the train. The paved path that runs behind Glenside Drive, Topper Lane and the Lafayette Community Center has been a transportation corridor for close to two centuries, and each era sent its main traffic down it. Mule trains used it first, then electric trains, then a utility easement. In the 1950s the state wanted to run cars through it on four lanes. Walkers and cyclists have it today because the car plan lost.
Nine panels, one corridor
The City of Lafayette's October 9 roundup announced an open house on Saturday, October 10, at the Jennifer Russell Building at 500 St. Mary's Road. Visitors could see all nine new interpretive panels in one place before the East Bay Regional Park District installs them along the trail. The Lafayette and Moraga Historical Societies made the panels together, with funding from the Community Foundation of Lafayette and the Moraga Community Foundation. An earlier city roundup credited the research to Lafayette resident Shane Reisman.
No firm installation date has been announced. Contra Costa News reported that installation was planned for later this year. Its notice counted 11 new panels. The city and the history trail site each list nine, and this post uses their count. Until the panels are up, the full text and archival photos are on the Lafayette–Moraga History Trail site, arranged north to south.
The project's own summary puts it briefly. Mule trains carried freshly milled redwood lumber along these routes in the 1800s. In 1913 the route became an electric railway and joined the 183-mile Sacramento Northern, one of the longest interurban train lines in North America. After World War II, cars and trucks took over the railroad's business. The rails were abandoned and the corridor became a utility easement.
The Lafayette stretch, stop by stop
The first four panels are on the Lafayette end. Read in order, they tell how the corridor was used for travel, era by era.
Reliez Station Road. The opening panel compares the trail to Highways 24 and 680. Like those freeways, the path has connected communities west of the Oakland Hills with people and land to the east, and the route continued south past Moraga to the redwoods of Canyon. The panel lists how people traveled it: first on foot, then by horse, then by rail until 1957, and finally by automobile.
Topper Lane. This stop covers commerce. During the mid-1800s timber boom, the route linked lumber mills in the Oakland hills with shipping ports in Martinez. In 1847 Elam Brown, the founder of Lafayette, acquired the 3,329-acre former Mexican land grant Rancho Acalanes. Stores opened to serve locals and travelers, including Gold Rush "49ers." After 1913, the line made several stops in Lafayette, so local merchants could sell goods to settlers, farmers and ranchers.
Glenside Drive. This is the panel that surprises most. By 1939, commuters could board the Sacramento Northern's daily Comet and Meteor trains at Glenside and ride straight into San Francisco on the lower-deck rails of the new Bay Bridge. The trains had dining and parlor cars, reached speeds up to 60 mph, and ran from San Francisco to Sacramento in less than three hours. Costs grew faster than revenue. The Bay Bridge opened in 1936, the new Caldecott Tunnel in 1937, and better roads drew riders away. Passenger service ended in 1941, and freight followed in 1957.
Lafayette Community Center. This panel tells the story the trail's anniversary rests on.
Highway 77, the freeway that never was
As car ownership rose, so did plans to use the corridor for cars. In the 1950s, transportation officials proposed a four-lane freeway along the route of today's trail. The "Shepherd Canyon Freeway," or Highway 77, would have come out of a tunnel from Oakland, cut through Moraga Valley and Burton Valley, and passed just feet from the Community Center panel site on its way to Highway 24. The state planned to use eminent domain to force property owners to sell.
Neighbors opposed it for decades. In 1972, after BART service had started, the State Assembly removed the project from the State Highway Plan. In 1975 Caltrans dropped Highway 77 from future consideration.
Once Highway 77 was off the table, the corridor became a trail. The history site says local communities partnered with the Park District in 1974 to turn the corridor into a paved path. The Park District gives the dedication date as July 4, 1976. Lafayette, Moraga and the District had formed a trails committee to reuse the abandoned Sacramento Northern right-of-way, and the District says the result was the first Rails-to-Trails project in the country when it was finished. The two sources don't explain why their dates differ. One likely reads as the start of the conversion and the other as the formal dedication.
Community persistence comes up in other accounts of the trail too. At the trail's 45th-anniversary event, Lamorinda Weekly reported that trail founder Avon Wilson credited the project's success to
"two PTA ladies who were able to persist."
The same Community Center stop points to a separate panel nearby, in the native plant garden and parking lot next to the children's play area. It covers how the Bay Miwok have lived with this land along the trail and beyond since time immemorial.
South of Lafayette, the story turns older
Past the Community Center, the panels move away from transportation and further back in time. At Rheem Boulevard and St. Mary's Road, the "Prehistoric Life" panel describes the inland sea that once covered the area. Fossil snails, clams and sand dollars can still be found in the Moraga Valley. Footprints of prehistoric horses, amphibious rhinoceros and camels have been found here, and short-faced bears, bison and mastodons left their own marks before dying out 11,000 to 13,000 years ago.
The other four stops are at Saint Mary's College, Moraga Commons, which covers ranching, Moraga Country Club, which covers local agribusiness, and Valle Vista, where the panel is titled "A Lost Community." Walked from Reliez Station Road south, the series starts with railroads and freeways and ends with ranches, farms and a vanished settlement.
Walking it this fall
The Park District's trail page lists hours of 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. unless otherwise posted. The trail is paved, wheelchair accessible, and open to hikers, bicyclists and equestrians. The north entrance is at Olympic Boulevard and Pleasant Hill Road, and the south end is at EBMUD's Valle Vista staging area. Other staging areas are at St. Mary's Road, Lucille Lane and Moraga Road.
Riders on the Moraga side may notice new pavement. A Park District notice scheduled a closure of the segment from S. Lucille Lane to Rheem Boulevard, including the Lucille Lane staging area, from August 27 through September 3, 2026, to remove and replace three inches of asphalt. When we checked the District's alerts page, it showed no Lafayette-Moraga alert. That page changes often, so look at it before a long ride.
The corridor question is still open
The Glenside panel says that when the trail opened, "transit returned to the trail," this time for pedestrians, bicyclists and equestrians. Lafayette is still working out how people get around a few blocks north of the trail. The city's October 9 roundup lists the BART Bike Station/Pathway project as ongoing. The city's BART Access and Circulation Study is taking survey responses through October 18, 2026, to find barriers and set priorities for improving access within about a half mile of the station. In September, a new advisory committee began work on the Mt. Diablo Boulevard Corridor Multimodal Mobility Plan, which will guide downtown mobility studies over a term of about 18 to 24 months.
Fifty years after the freeway was dropped, BART service, which played a part in ending Highway 77, is at the center of Lafayette's newest planning work on walking and biking. October 18 is a good day to see it in person. The Lafayette Res Run for Education is that morning, and its Healthy Lifestyles Fair runs from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. on Lafayette Circle.
Lafayette's past decisions about land use still shape how its streets and paths work today. The Rita Dhillon Team has worked in Lafayette for more than 30 years and follows that history closely. If you'd like to talk about how today's corridor planning near BART and downtown fits into your own plans, book an appointment with our team.
