Calaveras Valley

Calaveras Reservoir is located primarily in Santa Clara County, California, with a small portion and its dam in Alameda County, California. In Spanish, Calaveras means "skulls". The reservoir is fed mainly by Arroyo Hondo and Calaveras Creek. Lying in the Calaveras Valley, the region is geologically active with the Calaveras Fault parallel to and to the west of the dam site. The seismic hazard forced replacement of the original dam. The replacement dam began construction in 2011 and was completed in 2019. The Calaveras Valley has diverse wildlife including deer, coyotes, squirrels, turkey vultures, red-winged blackbirds, yellow-billed magpies, red-tailed hawks, brewer's blackbirds, purple martins, barn swallows, bullock's orioles, and warblers. Since at least 2008, a pair of bald eagles has nested regularly.

Los Buellis Hills are a short sub−range of hills in the northwestern Diablo Range, in the South Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, within Santa Clara County, California.

Arroyo Hondo is a northwestward-flowing 13.0-mile-long (20.9 km) river in Santa Clara County, California, United States, that lies east of Milpitas. The area is privately owned by the San Francisco Water Department and is closed to public access because of its usage as drinking water. Bounded to the east by Oak Ridge and to the west by Poverty Ridge, Arroyo Hondo empties into the Calaveras Reservoir where it joins Calaveras Creek. It is formed by the confluence of Smith Creek and Isabel Creek which drain the west and east slopes of Mount Hamilton, respectively.

Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve is a 1,678-acre nature preserve in the eastern foothills of Santa Clara County, California. The preserve is managed by the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority and was opened to public in 2002. The only access to the preserve had been from Alum Rock Park until 2014, when a new parking lot and trailhead opened along Sierra Road.

The 2007 Alum Rock earthquake occurred on October 30 at 8:04 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time in Alum Rock Park in San Jose, in the U.S. state of California. It measured 5.6 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of VI (Strong). The event was then the largest in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale, but was later surpassed by the 2014 South Napa earthquake. Ground shaking from the Alum Rock quake reached San Francisco and Oakland and other points further north. Sixty thousand felt reports existed far beyond Santa Rosa, as far north as Eugene, Oregon.

Ed R. Levin County Park is the largest park in Milpitas, California. It is run by the Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department and is located in the chaparral and grassland foothills of Diablo Range east of the Santa Clara Valley. Monument Peak can be accessed through trails in the park. The park's recreational facilities include a hang gliding and paragliding area, a dog park, and horseback riding areas. Ed R. Levin County Park has two lakes, Sandy Wool Lake and Spring Valley Pond. Both of them are reservoirs which collect runoff water from the hills to the east. It is home to some of the East Bay Walls. The park is named after open space advocate and Santa Clara County 3rd District Supervisor Edgar R. Levin (1908-1965).

Calaveras Creek is a northward-flowing stream in Alameda and Santa Clara counties of California. It runs for 8.5 miles (13.7 km), starting from Poverty Ridge, passing through Calaveras Reservoir, and emptying into Alameda Creek east of Fremont, California. Its main tributary is Arroyo Hondo.

The Sunol Regional Wilderness is a regional park in Alameda County, the eastern San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California. It is located near the town of Sunol, south of Pleasanton and east of Fremont. The 27.74 square kilometres (6,850 acres) park was established in 1962, and is administered by the East Bay Regional Park District. The park is subject to either closure or fire restriction during the wildfire season from June through October.

Poverty Ridge is a ridge in unincorporated Santa Clara County, California, east of Milpitas. Calaveras Valley lies to its west, while its east side slopes down to meet Arroyo Hondo. Creeks that originate on Poverty Ridge include Calaveras and Penitencia Creeks.

Monument Peak is a mountain peak located southeast of Fremont and northeast of Milpitas in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in California.

Rancho Milpitas was a 4,458-acre (18.04 km2) Mexican land grant in Santa Clara County, California. The name comes from the Nahuatl word for maize and could be translated "little cornfields". The grant included what is now the city of Milpitas.

The José María Alviso Adobe, located in Milpitas, California, United States, was the home of José María Alviso, an early alcalde (mayor) of neighboring Pueblo de San Jose. It was built in 1837 and enlarged in the early 1850s, and stands as an excellent example of the Monterey Colonial style of architecture popularized throughout California in the 1830s and 1840s. It is the only remaining example of this style in the Santa Clara Valley and San Francisco Bay Area. The adobe is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building is the result of a major remodeling completed by 1853 by the Alviso family. They added a wood-frame second floor to the family's one-story adobe house. Before the remodeling in 1853, the earlier building, built around 1837, most likely as a one-story adobe, provided the thick adobe walls of the first floor. The Alviso Adobe is a two-story residence with a hipped roof and a balcony carried on three sides. The plan of the rectangular residence is symmetrical, comprising three rooms downstairs with three upstairs rooms. The Alviso Adobe contains a remarkable amount of historic fabric—adobe walls from the 1830s, examples of framing and doors, windows, hardware from 1853 and an almost intact 1920s kitchen. It is unusual to find a building as little altered over a period of 150 years. The Alviso Adobe exhibits the character-defining features of the Monterey style: wood-shingled hipped roof, wood balconies on three sides, paired French doors opening to the outside, multi-paned windows, interior fireplaces, and a symmetrical layout. The property is under renovation. The project work comprises the upgrading of the existing historic farm to reflect the theme of a working ranch and orchard as it would have appeared in the 1920s. A number of mature trees are present on the site. A barn containing timbers dating to the 1840s was recently demolished. Both historic and prehistoric subsurface cultural remains have been documented in the vicinity of the residence.