Caminos, Californios & K-9s
- Aug 12
- 4 min read
Provided below is Lori A's summary of the “Walking the Caminos of Piedmont” walk that Matt G took us on this week. Thanks to both of them. Attached are our group photo and a map of the walk:
Walking the Caminos of Piedmont
August 12, 1839, was an important date in California history. It was the day pioneer John Sutter arrived at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers to establish Sutter's Fort. It is considered the founding of our California’s capital city, Sacramento. Accompanying Sutter were ten Hawaiians, three sailors, and one bulldog.
Precisely 191 years to the day following Sutter’s arrival, on Wednesday, August 12, 2026, a large party of 55 walkers and six K-9 best friends, Piedmont Recreation Department’s Walking on Wednesday’s group, met at the Exedra to walk the caminos (streets) of Piedmont.
Matt G was the intrepid leader of the Walkers last Wednesday. He was intrigued by the streets in Piedmont with Spanish names and decided it would be a good idea to introduce them to his fellow walkers. We traversed all the Spanish-named streets in town except for one—Alta. And why didn’t we walk to Alta? It’s because Alta means “tall,” “high,” or “upper” in Spanish and the group was reluctant to do a lot of uphill walking on a sunny summer day.
Here is a list of the Spanish-named streets in Piedmont, and what they mean in English:
Alta = high
Vista = view
Bonita = pretty
El Cerrito = little hill
Arroyo = creek
Estrella = star
Monte = mountain
Mesa = table
Pala = shovel
Moraga = can mean bundle, like a bundle of harvested wheat in a field, or, in Southern Spain, a beach barbecue. Most likely it is a reference to a Californio family in the Bay Area in pre-Gold Rush days, for whom the town of Moraga was named.
The Moraga family are an interesting lot. The first Moraga in California was patriarch Jose Joaquin Moraga, second in command to General de Anza during his colonizing expedition from Sonora Mexico to Alta California in 1776. Moraga founded the Presidio of San Francisco and the town of San Jose. His son Gabriel also served in the army and led explorations throughout the Central Valley, naming the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Kings and Feather Rivers, among others. The town of Moraga was not named for either of these men who had such great impacts on Northern California but rather for one of Gabriel’s 14 children, Joaquin, of whom the Moraga Historical Society’s newsletter said, “was never involved in any activity important enough to be recorded in any diaries or narratives.” Joaquin used his family name to apply for a land grant, and he received a rancho of about 20 square miles in the area that became known as Moraga. One route to that rancho was along what we now call Moraga Avenue. Thus our street is likely named for Joaquin Moraga.
California history swirling through our heads, our intrepid group of walkers marched from the Exedra, turned down Vista Avenue, and headed north on Bonita Avenue past the Frank C. Havens elementary school playground. It was the first week of school after summer vacation and the children sounded happy and excited about being back.
Crossing Oakland Avenue, we continued along Bonita, turning left (west) on Blair Avenue towards Dracena Quarry Park, and then turned right on El Cerrito Avenue, which as its name implied was only a very slight hill. Although Dracena sounds like it could be a Spanish word (cena means dinner in English), it is the name of a plant genus, thus an appropriate name for Piedmont’s second largest park. We took the Walkers’ group photo at the corner of El Cerrito and Ricardo (a proper name in Spanish) Avenue at the southwest corner of the park.
Next, the walkers traveled a short distance up Ricardo before we came to a hidden passage connecting the street to York Drive below. Emerging from the green, shaded tunnel of shrubs, the walkers continued down to Manor Drive and made a right turn to Arroyo Avenue. And then we encountered another hidden passage from Arroyo to Ramona (a proper Spanish name) Avenue. The walkers clambered down the stairway onto Ramona and turned uphill towards Estrella Avenue.
We followed the leafy tree-lined street until it ended at Moraga Avenue. And that’s where we encountered a confluence of three Spanish-named streets—Bonita, Estrella, and Moraga! It was not as influential as Sutter encountering the meeting of the American and Sacramento Rivers nearly 200 years ago, but it was still a pretty cool street sign. And a possible name for one of Moraga’s descendants--Beautiful Star.
Getting a good workout of our leg muscles, the walkers trudged up Moraga along what felt like a mountain trail to Monte Avenue. Then we climbed up to Mesa Avenue, which, as its name promised, was flat as a table. Whew! From there it was all downhill on Pala Avenue to Highland Avenue. And at the corner of Pala and Highland we saw a man wielding a shovel which gave usall a chuckle. Some of us will be thinking of Pala as “Shovel Street” in the future.
The walkers who were left after climbing the hills ambled back along Highland Avenue to the Exedra, where we thanked Matt for an excellent tour of the “Caminos of Piedmont.” The walk was just over two miles long.
AI-generated podcast on the Moraga family that Matt got. It is
Comments