Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve
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Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve
The Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve is a park located north of Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County, California under the administration of the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD). The district acquired the property in 1973. The preserve contains relics of 3 mining towns, former coal and sand mines, and offers guided tours of a former sand mine. The of trails in the Preserve cross rolling foothill terrain covered with grassland, California oak woodland, California mixed evergreen forest, and chaparral. History Natural History Indigenous People Long before the widespread ranching and mining activity that took place in the area, indigenous people had a presence in the Bay Area for 13,000 years. Three Bay Miwok tribes, the Chupcan, Ompin, and Volvon, lived in the areas surrounding the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. The Chupcan occupied territory to the west of the preserve near Concord, the Volvon occupied the territory to the south including much of Mo ...
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Antioch, California
Antioch is the third-largest city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area along the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The city's population was 115,291 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. The city has grown substantially more diverse since the 1970s. History Early history Antioch is one of the oldest towns in the region. The town has been variously named East Antioch, Smith's Landing, and Marsh's Landing, prior to its current name. In 1848, John Marsh (pioneer), John Marsh, owner of Rancho Los Méganos, one of the largest ranches in California, built a landing on the San Joaquin River in what is now Antioch. It became known as Marsh's Landing, and was the shipping point for the rancho. It included a pier extending well out into the river, enabling vessels drawing of water to tie up there in any season of the year. The landing also included a slaughterhouse, a smokehouse for curing hams, r ...
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Tertiary
Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago. The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start of the Cenozoic Era, and extended to the beginning of the Quaternary glaciation at the end of the Pliocene Epoch. The time span covered by the Tertiary has no exact equivalent in the current geologic time system, but it is essentially the merged Paleogene and Neogene periods, which are informally called the Early Tertiary and the Late Tertiary, respectively. The Tertiary established the Antarctic as an icy island continent. Historical use of the term The term Tertiary was first used by Giovanni Arduino during the mid-18th century. He classified geologic time into primitive (or primary), secondary, and tertiary periods based on observations of geology in Northern Italy. Later a fourth period, the Quaternary, was applied. In the early d ...
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Black Diamond Coal Mining Railroad
The Black Diamond Coal Mining Railroad was long and ran from Black Diamond Landing, California (now part of the city of Pittsburg, California) to Nortonville, California. It was owned and operated by the Black Diamond Coal Mining Company and therefore did not have its own official name. Over the years, it has been known by at least four different names. (A report prepared by the State in the 1880s referred to it as both the "Black Diamond Coal Mining Railroad Company" and the "Black Diamond Railroad." It has also been referred to as the "Black Diamond Coal Company Railroad" and the "Black Diamond Coal and Railroad Company."B. H. Ward, Mt. Diablo Coal Mine Railroads, The Western Railroader, Booklet 370-E.) The railroad was built by Gold Rush-era civil engineer and artist Sherman Day, and opened for service in 1868 primarily to serve the Black Diamond Coal Mine at Nortonville. At the town of Cornwall, California the railroad crossed the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad us ...
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San Joaquin River
The San Joaquin River (; es, Río San Joaquín) is the longest river of Central California. The long river starts in the high Sierra Nevada, and flows through the rich agricultural region of the northern San Joaquin Valley before reaching Suisun Bay, San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean. An important source of irrigation water as well as a wildlife corridor, the San Joaquin is among the most heavily dammed and diverted of California's rivers. People have inhabited the San Joaquin Valley for more than 8,000 years, and it was long one of the major population centers of pre-Columbian California. Starting in the late 18th century, successive waves of explorers then settlers, mainly Spanish and American, emigrated to the San Joaquin basin. When Spain colonized the area, they sent soldiers from Mexico, who were usually of mixed native Mexican and Spanish birth, led by Spanish officers. Franciscan missionaries from Spain came with the expeditions to evangelize the natives by teac ...
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Judsonville, California
Judsonville was a city in eastern Contra Costa County, California ) of the San Francisco Bay , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_name1 = California , subdivision_type2 .... It was located northeast of Stewartville, which is now a ghost town. It was a mining town for the nearby coal mines.GhostTowns.com
retrieved September 17, 2007 A post office operated at Judsonville from 1878 to 1883, with a closure in 1879. The name is in honor of Egbert Judson, part owner of a mine.


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Ghost towns in California
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West Hartley, California
West Hartley was an unincorporated community in eastern Contra Costa County, California. It was located northeast of Mount Diablo Mount Diablo is a mountain of the Diablo Range, in Contra Costa County, California, Contra Costa County of the eastern San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. It is south of Clayton, California, Clayton and northeast of Danville, Califo ..., at an elevation of 440 feet (134 m). It is now a ghost town. It was a mining town for the nearby coal mines.GhostTowns.com
retrieved September 17, 2007 It was founded in the late 1880s and named for England's West Hartley coal mine.


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Stewartville, California
Stewartville was an unincorporated place in eastern Contra Costa County, California that is now a ghost town. It was located northeast of Mount Diablo, at an elevation of 558 feet (170 m). It was a mining town A mining community, also known as a mining town or a mining camp, is a community that houses miners. Mining communities are usually created around a mine or a quarry. Historic mining communities Australia * Ballarat, Victoria * Bendigo, ... for the nearby coal mines.GhostTowns.com
retrieved September 17, 2007 A post office operated at Stewartville from 1882 to 1902. The place was named for William Stewart, coal mine owner.


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* Ghost towns in ...
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Somersville, California
Somersville (also, Sommerville and Summerville) is an unincorporated ghost town in eastern Contra Costa County, California.SOMERSVILLE
GhostTowns.com, retrieved September 12, 2007
It is located north-northeast of , at an elevation of 741 feet (226 m). Somersville was founded in the 1850s by gold miners. It was named after Francis Somers, who had discovered the Black Diamond Mine. Somersville was home to the Manhattan, Union, Eureka, Pittsburg and Independent mines. The town is no longer populated and is within the boundaries of the

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Nortonville, California
Nortonville is an unincorporated ghost town in Contra Costa County, California. It was located on Kirker Creek north-northeast of Mount Diablo, at an elevation of 801 feet (244 m). Location Nortonville is located on Nortonville Road just outside the city of Pittsburg in Contra Costa County. The town site is now part of the Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. History Nortonville was founded by Noah Norton in 1855."The move of coal miners from Nortonville, California to Black Diamond, Washington Territory, 1885". Jacqueline Byer Dial, 1980. He, along with three partners named Cutler, Matheson and Sturgis, started the Black Diamond coal mine at Nortonville in 1860."Letter from Contra Costa County," ''Daily Alta California'', Dec. 10, 1860. The mine was incorporated as the Black Diamond Coal Mining Company in June 1861."Another Coal Mining Company," ''Daily Alta California'', June 15, 1861.
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Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous ( Pennsylvanian) and Permian times. Many significant coal deposits are younger than this and originate from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Coal is used primarily as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited until the Industrial Revolution. With the invention of the steam engine, coal consumption increased. In 2020, coal supplied about a quarter of the world's primary energy and over a third of its electricity. Some iron ...
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Eocene
The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', "dawn") and (''kainós'', "new") and refers to the "dawn" of modern ('new') fauna that appeared during the epoch. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Paleocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the Eocene is marked by a brief period in which the concentration of the carbon isotope Carbon-13, 13C in the atmosphere was exceptionally low in comparison with the more common isotope Carbon-12, 12C. The end is set at a major extinction event called the ''Grande Coupure'' (the "Great Break" in continuity) or the Eocene–Oligocene extinction event, which may be related to the impact of one or more large bolides in Popigai impact structure, Siberia and in what is now ...
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Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily in Nevada. The Sierra Nevada is part of the American Cordillera, an almost continuous chain of mountain ranges that forms the western "backbone" of the Americas. The Sierra runs north-south and its width ranges from to across east–west. Notable features include General Sherman, the largest tree in the world by volume; Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America; Mount Whitney at , the highest point in the contiguous United States; and Yosemite Valley sculpted by glaciers from one-hundred-million-year-old granite, containing high waterfalls. The Sierra is home to three national parks, twenty wilderness areas, and two national monuments. These areas include Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks; and Devils Po ...
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