1838 San Andreas earthquake

Monte Bello Open Space Preserve is a 3,133-acre (12.68 km2) open space preserve, located near Palo Alto in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, California, United States. The preserve encompasses the upper Stevens Creek watershed in the valley between Monte Bello Ridge and Skyline Ridge. "Monte Bello" means "beautiful mountain" in Italian, and refers to Black Mountain which is the highest part of Montebello Ridge. The straight valley of upper Stevens Creek is also the rift valley of the San Andreas Fault.

Black Mountain is a summit on Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains of west Santa Clara County, California, south of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, and west of Cupertino; it is within the Palo Alto city limits though not near the developed part of the city. It is located on the border between Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve and Monte Bello Open Space Preserve, with the summit located in the former. Early Spanish explorers commonly named tree- or chaparral-covered summits which look black in the distance Loma Prieta, from the Spanish (loma-hill, prieta-dark). The Spanish also called the middle portion of the Santa Cruz Mountains the Sierra Morena meaning (morena-brunette, sierra-mountain range), extending from Half Moon Bay Road (California State Route 92) south to a gap at Lexington Reservoir, and which includes a summit called Sierra Morena. There are over 100 "Black Mountains" in California.

Ridge Vineyards is a California winery specializing in Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, and Chardonnay wines. Ridge produces wine at two winery locations in northern California. The original winery facilities are located at an elevation of 2,300 feet (700 metres) on Monte Bello Ridge in unincorporated Santa Clara County in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, south of Los Altos, California and west of Cupertino, California. The other Ridge winery facilities are at Lytton Springs in the Dry Creek Valley AVA of Sonoma County. Ridge Vineyard's 1971 Monte Bello Cabernet Sauvignon gained prominence for its fifth-place finish in the 1976 "Judgment of Paris" wine tasting.

KFJC (89.7 FM) is a volunteer-run non-commercial college radio station in Los Altos Hills, California, at Foothill College, using a variety radio format that features a broad spectrum of music styles and public affairs programming. KFJC's over-the-air broadcast is 24/7 and can be heard within the southern San Francisco Bay Area. KFJC's mission is to be a conduit for new and interesting audio art and information. KFJC's music programming is largely oriented to recent material from many genres. Most programs must play at least 35% (by song count) tracks from material added in the last 8 weeks. The station is licensed to the trustees of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District and operated as a teaching laboratory for the Fine Arts and Communications Department of Foothill College. As a community radio station, the vast majority of KFJC's small operating budget is raised during their annual fundraiser held each October, which is supplemented by other community events such as penny-pitches, film festivals, and the like.KFJC's 300-watt transmitter is located on Black Mountain, in the Monte Bello Open Space Preserve, south of Los Altos, California.

Long Ridge is a hill located in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. The hill rises to an elevation of about 2,600 feet (792 m) on private property near Highway 35 and the Santa Clara-San Mateo county line. The hill is the highest point in San Mateo County. A hill to the northeast of Long Ridge rises to 2,566 feet (782 m). Some snow falls on the mountain during the winter.The Long Ridge Open Space Preserve is named for this ridge.

Long Ridge Open Space Preserve is a 2,035-acre (824 ha) open space preserve along Long Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

West Santa Clara is an unincorporated census county division (CCD) located on the eastern side of the Santa Cruz Mountains in northwest Santa Clara County, California. The area covers approximately 50 square miles (130 km2), much of it open space, and contains Boronda Lake, Felt Lake, and Lake Ranch reservoirs, as well as Sanborn and Stevens Creek county parks. The Foothills, Los Trancos, Monte Bello, Pearson-Arastradero, Picchetti Ranch, Rancho San Antonio and Saratoga Gap preserves are also located in the area. As of the 2010 US Census, the population was 7,529 residents of whom 67.7% were non-Hispanic white, 22.8% Asian, 4.8% Hispanic, and 4.7% of other races, with a median age of 50.0 years old. As of 2009, the median income was $169,186 and median home price $1,527,451.Most residents and businesses in the area use postal zip codes from neighboring cities of Palo Alto, Portola Valley, Los Altos Hills, Cupertino, and Saratoga. The telephone area codes are 408 (Santa Clara County), and 650 (overlaps with San Mateo County).

Lambert Creek is a tributary of Peters Creek in San Mateo County, California in the United States.

Saratoga Gap Open Space Preserve is a 1540-acre regional park located near Saratoga Gap in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Santa Clara County, California. The preserve is owned and operated by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. The preserve contains about 2 miles (3 km) of hiking trails, which are open to equestrians and bicycles. Saratoga Gap contains elements of the Bay Area Ridge Trail, a large and partially complete regional trail.The preserve is forested with oak and evergreen trees.

Los Trancos Open Space Preserve is a 274-acre (1.11 km2) open space preserve, located in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, California, near Los Altos Hills, California. The preserve contains about 5 miles (8 km) of hiking trails, of which 2.1 miles (3.4 km) are open to equestrians, and none are open to bicycles. The area was once a part of a 13,300 acre (53.8 km2) rancho. The preserve's acreage was purchased by state senator Louis Oneal in the early 1900s, who raised horses there. It was sold to a developer in the 1950s. Power and water lines were run to the property in the 1960s, but development was abandoned when the city of Palo Alto discovered the high cost of providing city services to the area. The preserve was acquired by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District in 1976. While the preserve is relatively small compared to other preserves and parks in the area, it has one notable feature: about one mile (1.5 km) of the San Andreas Fault runs underneath it. Several series of markers throughout the preserve indicate where the ground has broken during various earthquakes. Additionally, a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) trail follows the main break caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. This trail includes several interpretive stations that point out various quake-caused features and phenomenon. Guided "quake walks" are held about once a month. Just northwest of Page Mill Road, the preserve protects the headwaters of Los Trancos Creek, a tributary of San Francisquito Creek.

The Permanente Quarry is a limestone quarry in an unincorporated area of Santa Clara County, California, just west of Cupertino, California. The quarry is a limestone and aggregate mining operation and cement plant, owned by Lehigh Southwest Cement, a subsidiary of Heidelberg Cement. Since 1939 the plant has been in operation and is responsible for the production of more than half of the cement used in the Bay Area. Roughly 70 percent of the cement used in the communities of Santa Clara County is acquired from the cement plant.Located in the foothills above Cupertino on the northeast slopes of Black Mountain, the quarry runs east-west parallel to the upper watershed of Permanente Creek to the south and to Permanente Ridge and Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve to the north. The limestone rock found in the Permanente Creek valley and on the summit of Black Mountain is relatively unique in the Bay Area. Microfossils in the limestone deposits suggest that the mountain originated as a seamount at 22 degrees north in the tropical Pacific about 100 million years ago and was transported to Los Altos by the Pacific Plate. These rocks occur as jagged gray boulders and outcrops just southwest of the radio towers on the summit of Black Mountain, as well as in the Permanente Quarry.

Portola Redwoods State Park is a 2,800 acres (1,100 ha) state park in California situated in San Mateo County. The parks' primary watercourses — Peters Creek, Pescadero Creek and their associated tributaries — converge at Portola Redwoods State Park. Tip Toe Falls is a small waterfall along Fall Creek, a tributary of Pescadero Creek. The indigenous Quiroste people, affiliated with the broader constellation of Ramaytush Ohlone communities based in the San Francisco Peninsula, were among the original inhabitants of Portola Redwoods State Park, where they obtained various species of fish, such as coho salmon and steelhead trout, along the waterways that wend along the region, and harvested asphaltum from Tar Creek. In addition, the Quiroste maintained trading networks with tribes further inland and exchanged a variety of coastal products, including beads cultivated from Olivella sea shells as a means of barter.In 1769, the Portola expedition entailed an overland journey from the Pacific coastline of San Mateo County to San Francisco Bay, presaging the advent of European-American settlement and colonization in the area. During the nineteenth-century California Gold Rush, the copious redwood groves were harvested for industrial purposes, such as mining and other construction enterprises. It was not until the 1860s, however, that the park was settled by Danish immigrant and lumberjack Christian Iverson, whose surname is commemorated by the titular Iverson trail today.By 1924, about 1,600 acres (650 ha) — about half of the park's contemporary size — was bequeathed to the Masonic Lodge, whose Shriners subsequently sold the land to the State of California, and Portola Redwoods State Park officially opened under the auspices of the California Department of Parks and Recreation in 1945. Owing to the fundraising efforts of such environmental organizations as Save the Redwoods League, the park was later enlarged to its current dimensions.Relatively remote and secluded, the park offers various recreational opportunities for visitors, including a variety of hiking trails ranging in length and difficulty. For instance, the 1.2 miles (1.9 km) roundtrip Old Tree Trail confers access to the eponymous redwood tree, renowned for its longevity (estimated at 1200 years) and height of over 300 feet (91 m). In addition, the longer Peters Creek Loop offers backpackers and hikers willing to traverse 11.9 miles (19.2 km) roundtrip the opportunity to witness some of the oldest and tallest redwoods in the San Francisco Bay Area.Portola Redwoods State Park contains approximately 18 miles of hiking trails in the 2,800-acre park, a small car-camping campground of about 50 campsites, four group campsites, and 6 trail sites at Slate Creek Trail Camp. Portola Redwoods State Park is also home to the site of Page shingle Mill, for which Page Mill Road is named.