If you've driven Blackhawk Road toward Diablo Road lately, you may have noticed new trail signage where there used to be nothing but a ranch fence. Two new trails opened at Magee Preserve in late August, adding more than two miles to a hillside that had been closed to the public since long before Danville was an incorporated town. That part of the story is easy to tell. The harder part, the piece that actually determines whether you can walk there from downtown without getting in a car, has been under construction since last year and won't be finished until at least December.

Here's what changed, what didn't, and why the connector road matters more than the ribbon cutting.

What Actually Opened Last Month

Save Mount Diablo announced the opening of the Art Bonwell Trail, named for one of the organization's co-founders, and the Do'-yum'-bel'-le Vista Trail, named in recognition of the Bay Miwok name for Mount Diablo. Together they add more than two miles of new public access on the Magee Preserve property, connecting into the trail network the East Bay Regional Park District opened one ridge over in June 2025.

That earlier opening put more than 3.5 miles of EBRPD-owned trail into public hands. Add the new Save Mount Diablo mileage and the Magee Preserve network now runs past 5.5 miles, all of it built on land that a single family had held privately since before Danville existed as an incorporated town.

Save Mount Diablo's executive director, Ted Clement, credited Davidon Homes for donating the trail easement that made the new routes possible, along with a volunteer trail crew he referred to as "Dave Hammond and the Trail Dogs." The organization frames these two trails as part of a broader push it has made across multiple properties recently, not just this one hillside, so treat the mileage here as specific to Magee Preserve rather than a citywide total.

The Ranch Nobody Could Walk On for a Century and a Half

The land under these new trails was Magee Ranch, and the reason it sat closed for so long has nothing to do with neglect. It was zoned agricultural, owned by one family, and simply never subject to a public easement.

That changed through a negotiated trade, not a donation. In 2019, the Danville Town Council gave initial approval to a Davidon Homes proposal: build 69 single-family homes and seven attached secondary units on 29 acres, roughly 7 percent of the 410-acre property, in exchange for permanently protecting the remaining 381 acres, 93 percent of the ranch, as public open space. Danville voters confirmed the arrangement in March 2020 by passing Measure Y.

Then-mayor Robert Storer put the stakes plainly at the 2019 hearing: "For literally 161 years, since Danville's creation, the public has not touched this property and I have a feeling that after this motion we will be able to touch this property." The homes themselves range from roughly 4,050 to over 5,600 square feet, built in a mix of Mediterranean, Modern Farmhouse, Craftsman, and Traditional styles near the intersection of Jillian Way and Blackhawk Road. The houses were the fast part of the deal. The trails took years longer, and the final connecting piece still isn't done.

The Piece That Took Longer Than the Houses

Danville's 1989 Townwide Trail Master Plan called for a trail linking the existing Barbara Hale Trail to Mount Diablo State Park. Nobody could build it, because the missing segment had to cross a creek and climb hilly terrain across land the Magee family owned outright. The 2019 approval finally gave the town a legal path: Davidon would build the eastern portion inside the subdivision, and the town would build the western portion on a dedicated public easement.

At the time, not everyone believed the western piece would actually get built. A resident identified in coverage of the hearing as Cella called the promised trail "unplanned, unfunded, undesigned," with no cost estimate or environmental review. Then-assistant town manager Tai Williams pushed back, arguing the town had "seed money" and "the community's will to build it."

Seven years later, that piece is under construction. The Diablo Road Trail Project is a 0.9-mile paved multi-use trail running along the south side of Diablo Road from Fairway Drive to about 400 feet west of Avenida Nueva, closing the gap between the existing half-mile Barbara Hale Trail and the new 0.7-mile segment built as part of Magee Preserve. The project budget is $5.2 million, with $4.7 million coming from the Contra Costa Transportation Authority's Measure J transportation sales tax fund rather than developer fees. Work began in 2025 with fencing removal and is expected to continue in phases through December 2026, pausing every November through March for the rainy season.

Until that segment opens, the new Magee Preserve trails and the rest of Danville's trail network are two separate systems connected mostly by road, not by trail.

What This Means for Your Next Walk

If you want to explore what's actually walkable right now, the existing Sycamore Valley Open Space Regional Preserve is still your most complete option. It totals 695 acres today, expanded through land acquisitions between 1989 and 1998, and the new Magee trails tie into its northern ridge rather than replacing it. Sycamore Valley Park at Holbrook Drive and Camino Tassajara remains the neighborhood's familiar starting point, with its splash pad running from April through September, a reflection pond, and a jogging path most residents already know.

The new mileage at Magee Preserve sits further along the ridge, closer to Blackhawk Road, and connects to the East Bay Regional Park District network that opened in 2025. Expect construction fencing and posted message boards along Diablo Road itself for a while longer. The town has said it will post advisories 72 hours ahead of any work that could affect trail or road access.

If you're bringing a dog and want an off-leash option to pair with the walk, Hap Magee Ranch Park, a separate property despite the shared family name, has the Canine Corral dog park about a mile toward Alamo along the Iron Horse Trail. It's a different Magee than the one behind Blackhawk Road, but the overlap says something about how much of this valley traces back to the same ranching families.

The trailhead signs went in fast. The quarter mile that actually finishes the sentence Danville started writing in 1989 is still being poured, one dry season at a time.

If you're the kind of person who tracks this stuff because you love where you live, not because you're shopping for it, you're exactly who this was written for. And if a conversation about the neighborhood ever turns into a conversation about your house, Hector Mancera is a Danville native who'd be glad to have that conversation too. Let's Connect.