Wheel Vector
June 15

Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City

In Deep Oakland, geologist and author Andrew Alden excavated the ancient story of Oakland’s geologic underbelly and revealed how its silt, soil, and subterranean sinews are intimately entwined with its human history—and future.

How Geology Shaped a city

Poised atop a world-famous fault line now slumbering, Alden charted how these quaking rocks gave rise to the hills and the flats; how ice-age sand dunes gave root to the city’s eponymous oak forests; how the Jurassic volcanoes of Leona Heights gave way to mining boom times; how Lake Merritt has swelled and disappeared a dozen times over the course of its million-year lifespan; and how each epochal shift has created the terrain cradling Oaklanders today.

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