Sycamore Grove Park south of Livermore, California

A sycamore with a view: Hobbit Tree peekhole

Sycamore Grove Park is a small semi-urban park surrounded by neighborhoods, wineries and orchards. The ruins of the old Olivina Winery can be found within this open-space park with its many loop trails. Hiking, bicycling and horseback riding trails traverse sycamore and oak woodland as well as grasslands. Unpaved roads and single-track paths over hilly landscape offer varying vistas of the valleys and mountains of the Diablo Range, including the Mt. Diablo Summit and North Peak north of Livermore. If you enjoy relaxing in riparian habitat, you may just want to stroll along the trails on either side of the willow-lined Arroyo del Valle, which runs through the park.

Sycamore bark patchwork

The park is named for California's native western sycamore trees that you can explore on the brookside plains. Platanus racemosa (family Platanaceae) trees grow over 100 feet (35 m) tall. Trunks commonly divide in two or more strong trunks. The bark typically builds a patchwork of white, gray and beige layers. Older and darker bark slowly peels away.
 

Arroyo del Valle seen from Magpie Loop Trail

The Hobbit Tree, a hollow tree with a look-through hole, is the most popular sycamore in the park and a fun site for photo shoots. Sylvia Linsteadt explains that western sycamore trees can live for hundreds of years and that the oldest tree sprouted in what is now Sycamore Grove Park some 300 years ago [1]. Describing the grand old sycamores amid flat grassland on either side of the Arroyo del Valle streambed, she writes about the once common, now rare sycamore alluvial woodlands in California:

Such wide, graveled banks are a classic feature of sycamore alluvial woodland, and they're integral to the tree's health and longevity. A distinct and vital ecosystem in California, sycamore alluvial woodland is characterized by summer-dry streambeds that branch and braid out through the sandbars, silt, and gravel beds deposited by winter rains and floods. [...]. Livermoore's Sycamore Grove Park is among the few preserved alluvial woodlands left in the East Bay, and as such it provides us a window into an older California.    

The flooding that occurred during the 2016/2017 winter rains hopefully boosted the revival and healthy growth of those sycamores that had been damaged in drought years.


Getting there
Sycamore Grove Park has two main entrances (a few miles south from downtown Livermore): the Wetmore Road entrance at the park's northwest end and the Arroyo Road entrance at the southeast side, not very far from the Del Valle Regional Park entrance.

Wetmore Road Entrance

To get to the Wetmore entrance, drive west (best on 1st Street) from downtown Livermore to get on Holmes Street. The latter takes you south and continues as Vallecitos Road. Turn left on Wetmore Road and, after 0.3 miles, find the park entrance to your right.
To get to the Arroyo entrance, drive south on S L Street from downtown Livermore. S L Street continues as Arroyo Road. After passing the Arroyo Road/Wetmore Road junction with the historic Olivina Gate, follow Arroyo Road for another 1.5 miles and find the park entrance and ranger station to your right across the Wente Vineyards.

Ruins of the old Olivina Winery

References and more to explore

[1] Sylvia V. Linsteadt: Western sycamores speak of an older California. Bay Nature Oct. - Dec. 2017, 16-20+52.  Link: baynature.org/article/western-sycamores-speak-older-california.
[2] Livermore Area Recreation & Park District: www.larpd.org/open_space/sycamore.html.