Beverly Lane

"Mother of the Iron Horse Trail" — Historian, Open-Space Champion & Danville's Founding Councilmember

"You can do more about something if you're on the board."

Beverly Lane delivers her acceptance speech after receiving the 2014 Tri-Valley Heroes Life Achievement Award, honoring her decades of public service in the San Ramon Valley. Photo by Mike Sedlak.
40+ Years of Public Service
28 Years on EBRPD Board
3× Danville Mayor
4 Local History Books
32 Miles of Iron Horse Trail

Early Life & Context

Beverly Lane's journey from a Marine Corps childhood in postwar Southern California to becoming one of Contra Costa County's most enduring civic voices is a story of quiet determination, intellectual curiosity, and a deep conviction that the place where you live is worth fighting for.

Beverly Lane grew up in a Marine Corps family in Orange County, California, in the era she describes with characteristic wit: "I grew up in Orange County when there were still oranges there and before the interstate came through from Los Angeles to Santa Ana." It was an upbringing shaped by discipline, mobility, and an acute awareness that communities are fragile, temporary things — easily paved over if no one stands in the way. She graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles with a double major in History and English, a pairing that would define the dual nature of her later career: the historian who could not stop herself from acting, and the public servant who never stopped thinking historically.

She went on to earn a Master of Public Administration from California State University, Hayward, building the analytical toolkit that would later allow her to navigate everything from small-town incorporation campaigns to federal negotiations over a decommissioned naval weapons depot. In 1973, Beverly and her husband Jim relocated to Danville with their three sons. What she found was a fast-growing community at a pivotal moment — suburban pressures bearing down on a valley still shaped by ranchos, creek corridors, and open hillsides that had not yet been subdivided. Danville would become her life's canvas.

Lane came of age in an era when women were not expected to lead — a reality she has spoken about directly. "When growing up in the 1950s," she has noted, "women weren't generally expected to be leaders." Her college studies were geared toward becoming a historian, which she is. But she didn't stop there. She channeled that same analytical rigor into neighborhood associations, election campaigns, and eventually the halls of local government. She was, as one colleague put it, "a real team player" who arrived at every table with virtually no ego — and left having changed the outcome.

A Defining Intellectual Commitment

Even as Lane built her political career, she never abandoned the historian's vocation. She became the founding president of the Museum of the San Ramon Valley, established in the historic Danville Train Depot, and has served as its curator for decades. Her four published books — including Vintage Danville: 150 Years of Memories, Before BART: Electric Railroads Link Contra Costa County, and San Ramon Chronicles: Stories of Bygone Days — preserve voices and stories that would otherwise vanish entirely. The museum and the books were not sideline projects. They were the foundation of her entire philosophy: that you cannot protect a place you don't understand, and you cannot understand it unless someone takes the time to document it.

It was this convergence of historical consciousness and civic urgency that made Beverly Lane exceptional. She did not arrive in Danville as a politician. She arrived as a neighbor, a parent, a student of the place. Everything that followed grew organically from that rootedness — and from the conviction, developed over five decades, that the best way to serve a community is to know it deeply, show up consistently, and never mistake short-term development pressure for the long arc of a valley's story.

Leadership Journey

Beverly Lane's path from Danville newcomer to one of the East Bay's most consequential public servants unfolded in four deliberate phases — each building on the last, each driven not by ambition but by the simple conviction that the right way to fix something is to be in the room where decisions get made.

1

Rooting in the Community

Arriving in Danville in 1973, Lane began exactly where most great civic leaders begin: with neighborhood associations, local election campaigns, and the daily work of getting to know a place. "I started with neighborhood things, election campaign things, things that were about improving life where I lived," she has said. "For me, it's been a gradual evolution." This decade of civic apprenticeship gave her both the credibility and the relationships she would need to lead.

2

The Incorporation Campaign

In the early 1980s, Lane became a central figure in Danville's successful push for municipal incorporation — a campaign that required organizing residents, making the case for local self-governance, and building a coalition across a fast-changing suburb. When it succeeded in 1982, she was elected to the very first Danville Town Council. "To be part of creating a new town in an area that already had quite an impressive history... was quite an extraordinary experience," she recalled. Every "first" the new council accomplished was a milestone she helped shape.

3

From Town Hall to Regional Board

After eleven years on the Danville Town Council — three of them as Mayor — Lane chose not to seek re-election in 1993. But the time out of office was brief. Recruited to run for a vacant seat on the East Bay Regional Park District Board, she initially declined. Then she reconsidered: she realized the board seat was the single most powerful lever available to her for extending the Iron Horse Trail beyond the San Ramon Valley. "You can do more about something if you're on the board," she said — and ran. She won in 1994 and did not leave for 28 years.

4

Becoming the District's Institutional Memory

On the EBRPD board, Lane did something rare: she stayed long enough to see decade-long campaigns through to completion. She pushed the district to systematically document and protect the region's cultural heritage — Native American sites, Mexican ranchos, early settler landscapes — transforming what had been a natural-resources agency into one that equally honored cultural ones. Her colleague Ayn Wieskamp put it plainly: "She beat on us for years that we've got to do that. She cares about all those cultures, and she made us care about that issue."

Career Timeline

From Danville's founding Town Council to 28 years stewarding 125,470 acres of East Bay parkland, Beverly Lane's career traces the full arc of a civic life built on historical knowledge, strategic patience, and the conviction that the right person in the right seat can change a community's future. Her milestones span elected office, trail-building campaigns, cultural innovation, and enduring recognition — a hybrid leader in every sense of the term.

1973
MOVEMENT

Arrives in Danville — A Community Takes Root

Beverly Lane relocates to Danville with her husband Jim and their three sons, planting roots in the San Ramon Valley at a pivotal moment of suburban growth and demographic change. Almost immediately she begins engaging with neighborhood associations and local civic organizations, establishing the pattern of frontline community engagement that would define her entire public life. This decade of grassroots involvement gave her credibility no campaign could manufacture.

1982
POSITION

Elected to Danville's First Town Council

Following the successful incorporation of the Town of Danville — a campaign in which Lane played a central organizing role — she is elected to the inaugural Town Council, one of five founding members charged with building a new municipality from the ground up. The experience of establishing "firsts" — first policies, first commissions, first ordinances — at the birth of a new town gave her a systems-level understanding of governance that few elected officials ever acquire. She would serve three consecutive terms and be elected Mayor three separate times between 1982 and 1993.

1983
INNOVATION

Founds Heritage Resource Commission

Among her proudest accomplishments on the Danville Town Council, Lane initiates the creation of the Heritage Resource Commission — a formal body dedicated to identifying, documenting, and preserving the town's historic structures, landscapes, and cultural sites. The Commission reflected her conviction, which she would carry throughout her career, that rapid development without institutional memory erases the very character that makes a place worth preserving. It became a model for how a newly incorporated town could build preservation into its civic DNA from the very start.

1988
POSITION

Chairs the Central Contra Costa Transit Authority

Lane chairs the Central Contra Costa Transit Authority, expanding her civic portfolio beyond Danville into the regional transit infrastructure that connects communities across the county. The role deepened her understanding of multi-jurisdictional governance and reinforced her appreciation for the relationship between accessible public transit and equitable community life — themes that would inform her later work on the Iron Horse Trail as a multi-modal corridor serving cyclists, pedestrians, and commuters alike.

1992
POSITION

Elected President, California Elected Women

Lane serves as President of California Elected Women for 1992–93, connecting her San Ramon Valley civic work to the broader statewide network of women in public office. The role placed her at the intersection of local governance and the national movement to increase women's representation in elected positions — an experience that brought her voice into conversations about equity, leadership, and the structural barriers facing women seeking public office throughout California.

1993
MOVEMENT

Founding President, Museum of the San Ramon Valley

Lane co-founds the Museum of the San Ramon Valley, housed in the historic Danville Train Depot at 205 Railroad Avenue, and serves as the founding president of its Board of Trustees. The museum became the institutional home for the region's historical memory — documenting the stories of Native American peoples, Mexican rancheros, early settlers, and the communities that grew along the Southern Pacific rail corridor. Lane would go on to serve as museum curator for over a decade, authoring four books and creating a permanent civic archive for a valley that had been growing too fast to stop and remember itself.

1994
POSITION

Elected to EBRPD Board of Directors, Ward 6

After initially declining to seek the seat, Lane reconsidered when she recognized that the EBRPD board was the single most powerful vehicle for extending the Iron Horse Trail. Elected in 1994, she begins a 28-year tenure representing Ward 6 — the only ward in the entire Park District located entirely within Contra Costa County, encompassing Alamo, Blackhawk, Clayton, Concord, Danville, Diablo, Pleasant Hill, San Ramon, Tassajara, and much of Walnut Creek. She was re-elected to a fourth term and would not leave the board until 2022. Her priorities from day one: trails, cultural resources, and open space preservation over development pressure.

2000s
CAMPAIGN

Champions Trails — Iron Horse, Calaveras Ridge & Sycamore Valley

Throughout her EBRPD tenure, Lane leads sustained campaigns to establish and extend three signature trails and parks serving central Contra Costa County: the Iron Horse Regional Trail (which she advocated for even before joining the board, growing it to 32 miles from Concord to Pleasanton), the Calaveras Ridge Regional Trail connecting Sunol to Pleasanton Ridge, and Sycamore Valley Open Space Regional Preserve in Danville. She is credited by colleagues and community leaders as the essential force behind the Iron Horse Trail's expansion, earning the affectionate designation "Mother of the Iron Horse Trail." She also joined the board of the Anza Trail Foundation, supporting the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail.

2008
CAMPAIGN

Serves on Concord Naval Weapons Station Advisory Committee

Lane serves on the Community Advisory Committee reviewing reuse plans for the Concord Naval Weapons Station (CNWS) in 2008–09, working alongside U.S. Navy officials, National Park Service representatives, and Congressman Mark DeSaulnier to plan the conversion of over 2,500 acres of former federal land into regional parkland. The negotiations involved multiple jurisdictions, competing visions, and years of bureaucratic complexity — the kind of long-arc, multi-stakeholder challenge that Lane had spent her career preparing for. Her work laid the groundwork for one of the largest new park additions in the district's modern history.

2014
RECOGNITION

Tri-Valley Heroes Life Achievement Award

Lane receives the Tri-Valley Heroes Life Achievement Award, one of the region's most prestigious civic honors, in recognition of more than three decades of transformative public service. The award acknowledges her contributions to Danville's incorporation, the Iron Horse Trail, the preservation of the San Ramon Valley's cultural history, and her two decades of leadership on the EBRPD board. She delivers an acceptance speech in downtown Danville, reflecting on a career built not on career ambition but on showing up, over and over again, wherever the work needed to be done. She also received the Mountain Star Award from Save Mount Diablo and the California State Trail Advocacy Award from American Trails during her career.

2021
CAMPAIGN

Thurgood Marshall Regional Park Named — 13 Years of Advocacy Fulfilled

On June 1, 2021, the EBRPD Board of Directors formally approves the name of the new 2,500-acre regional park on the former Concord Naval Weapons Station: Thurgood Marshall Regional Park — Home of the Port Chicago 50. The name honors both a towering figure of American civil rights jurisprudence and the 50 Black Navy sailors who refused to continue loading ammunition under dangerous conditions at Port Chicago in 1944, an act of conscience that became a pivotal moment in the movement for military desegregation. For Lane, the naming represented the convergence of everything she believed in: open space preservation, cultural history, and the obligation to honor all the communities whose stories are written in the land.

2022
RECOGNITION

Retires After 28 Years — Named Director Emerita

Beverly Lane announces her retirement from the EBRPD Board of Directors in July 2022, completing 28 years of service representing Ward 6 — the longest continuous tenure of any Ward 6 director in the district's history. At her retirement, she reflects: "It has been such an honor to be on the board. We have enormous responsibilities for parks and open space in the East Bay. Our efforts to save lands from urban development and improve access have had a major impact on the quality of life for people in this area." She is named Director Emerita, an honor that acknowledges not just her years of service but the institutional legacy she leaves behind — in trails, parks, cultural preservation policies, and the next generation of leaders she helped shape.

Stories of Impact

Three moments that capture how Beverly Lane turned sustained, patient advocacy into lasting transformation — for trails, for parkland, and for the agricultural heritage of the San Ramon Valley.

🚴
1986 — Present

The Mother of the Iron Horse Trail

When the Southern Pacific Railroad removed its tracks through central Contra Costa County in 1979, most people saw an absence. Beverly Lane saw a 32-mile opportunity. The abandoned rail corridor threading from Concord through Walnut Creek, Alamo, Danville, and on toward Pleasanton had the potential to become something that the rapidly suburbanizing East Bay desperately needed: a continuous, car-free spine connecting communities, transit hubs, schools, and neighborhoods in a region increasingly defined by freeway congestion.

Lane began advocating for the trail even before she joined the EBRPD board in 1994. As a Danville Town Council member, she championed the concept locally, building community support and pressing the regional park district to prioritize the corridor. When she was recruited to run for the Ward 6 board seat, she later said, the Iron Horse Trail was the primary reason she reversed her initial decision not to run: "You can do more about something if you're on the board."

Once on the board, she became the trail's most persistent and effective champion, navigating the complex multi-jurisdictional negotiations required to secure the right-of-way, funding, and political support necessary to build the trail segment by segment through the dense suburban fabric of central Contra Costa County. The work required decades of patience, coalition-building, and a willingness to make the same argument, to the same skeptics, in meeting after meeting until it became simply understood that the Iron Horse Trail was going to be built.

Today the Iron Horse Regional Trail extends 32 miles from Concord to Pleasanton, serving millions of annual visits by cyclists, walkers, joggers, equestrians, and commuters. Seth Adams, land conservation director for Save Mount Diablo, spoke for many when he said Lane is "sometimes called the Mother of the Iron Horse Trail." The trail is one of the most heavily used multi-use paths in the Bay Area — and it exists, in the form it exists, because Beverly Lane decided to be in the room where that decision was made.

Impact & Legacy

The Iron Horse Regional Trail serves millions of annual visitors, functions as a key active-transportation commute corridor, and stands as the physical spine of civic life across central Contra Costa County. Lane also received the California State Trail Advocacy Award from American Trails for this work — a national recognition of her contribution to trail-building in America.

🌳
2008 — 2021

Thurgood Marshall Regional Park: 13 Years to a Name

The Concord Naval Weapons Station closed in 1997, leaving behind 2,500 acres of former federal land in the heart of Contra Costa County — an extraordinary open-space opportunity sitting at the intersection of complex federal, municipal, and environmental interests. For years, the reuse process moved slowly, tangled in competing visions, environmental assessments, and the bureaucratic complexity of surplus federal property disposition.

In 2008–09, Beverly Lane joined the Community Advisory Committee reviewing reuse plans for the site. Working alongside U.S. Navy officials, National Park Service representatives, and Congressman Mark DeSaulnier, she helped steer the vision toward what she believed it should be: a regional park that honored both the natural landscape and the profound civil rights history embedded in the site. Port Chicago, where the worst stateside naval disaster of World War II occurred in 1944, was located on the adjacent waterfront. The 50 Black sailors who refused to continue loading ammunition in unsafe conditions — the Port Chicago 50 — had launched a court case that became a milestone in the movement for military desegregation.

Lane understood that a park on this land could not be merely scenic. It carried a moral obligation to bear witness. She worked through every bureaucratic obstacle and every change of administration to keep the park's planning on track, pushing back against development pressure and ensuring that the cultural history of the site remained central to every planning conversation. "In Concord, we're very close — we're planning the parks at this stage — and that's extraordinary," she said in 2016, describing what others saw as frustrating delays as remarkable progress by historical standards.

On June 1, 2021, the EBRPD Board voted to name the new park Thurgood Marshall Regional Park — Home of the Port Chicago 50. It was a name that honored both a Supreme Court Justice who had argued for the defense of the Port Chicago 50 as a young NAACP attorney, and the sailors themselves. For Lane, who had spent 13 years working toward this moment, the vote was a fulfillment of what public service is supposed to look like: sustained, purposeful, historically grounded, and patient enough to outlast every obstacle.

Impact & Legacy

Thurgood Marshall Regional Park — at 2,500 acres — represents one of the largest park additions in EBRPD history and one of the most significant new public open spaces in the Bay Area in a generation. It stands as both a natural resource and a civic monument to civil rights history, shaped at every stage by Beverly Lane's conviction that land and story belong together.

2009 — 2024

The Borel Walnut Orchard: A Farmer's Last Wish

When Danville walnut farmer Armand Borel died in 2009, he left behind not just a 17-acre homestead and heritage walnut orchard on the east side of Interstate 680 — he left behind a wish. Borel bequeathed his land to the East Bay Regional Park District specifically so it could be preserved as an agricultural park where the public could come to learn about the farming heritage of the San Ramon Valley. It was a deeply Californian kind of gift: a farmer trying to hold back, just a little, the tide of suburban development that had already swallowed most of what his valley once was.

The project immediately ran into trouble. The Borel Trust carried significant existing debts, and the Park District found itself mired in years of financial complexity — loaning the trust funds to prevent foreclosure, managing a property it could not yet open to the public, working through the legal and financial architecture necessary to eventually make the park viable. Through it all, Beverly Lane was the project's steadfast institutional champion on the board, keeping Borel Agricultural Park alive as a priority through budget cycles, staff transitions, and the grinding work of long-horizon public planning.

In March 2024 — nearly two years after Lane's retirement — the Park District finalized the sale of 7.28 acres of the property to a developer for $32 million. The proceeds covered the trust's debts and provided the capital needed to begin planning and developing the remaining acreage as the agricultural park Borel had envisioned. The District's new Ward 6 director, John Mercurio, was explicit about the debt owed: "Obtaining the Borel Property and opening it up for public access and agricultural interpretation and education has been a longtime goal of the Park District and my predecessor on the Park District Board of Directors, Beverly Lane."

Impact & Legacy

Borel Agricultural Park will become a public educational resource celebrating the agricultural heritage of the San Ramon Valley — a living reminder, in the middle of one of the Bay Area's most heavily suburbanized corridors, that this land once fed people and that memory matters. It is Beverly Lane's most tangible post-retirement legacy, a project that crossed the finish line because she refused to let it die.

Major Achievements

Beverly Lane's public career produced four categories of lasting impact — each representing not a single act but a decade or more of sustained, strategic advocacy that changed the physical, institutional, and cultural landscape of Contra Costa County.

🛤️

Open Space & Trails Legacy

Over 28 years on the EBRPD board, Beverly Lane was the leading advocate for open space preservation and trail development in central Contra Costa County. She championed the Iron Horse Regional Trail (32 miles), the Calaveras Ridge Regional Trail, Sycamore Valley Open Space Regional Preserve, and the proposed Borel Agricultural Park. She helped bring Thurgood Marshall Regional Park — a 2,500-acre former naval installation — into the public domain. Under her tenure, Ward 6 became one of the most trail-rich districts in the entire 73-park, 125,470-acre system. She also served on the board of the Anza Trail Foundation, supporting the 80-mile Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail.

🏛️

Municipal Founding & Governance

Beverly Lane was present at Danville's creation — a central figure in the incorporation campaign of 1982 and a charter member of the town's founding council. She served three consecutive terms, was elected Mayor three times, and built the foundational governance structures of a new municipality from the ground up. She established the Heritage Resource Commission to protect the town's historic character, chaired the Central Contra Costa Transit Authority in 1988, and served as President of California Elected Women in 1992–93. Across eleven years of council service, she demonstrated that effective local government is built not through confrontation but through consensus, coalition, and a long view of what a community owes to its future.

🌍

Cultural Heritage Preservation

Lane used her EBRPD board seat as a platform to transform how the district understood and protected the cultural landscape of the East Bay. She pushed relentlessly — over years and over objections — for the district to systematically document the Native American heritage, Mexican rancho history, and early settler stories embedded in its parklands. "She beat on us for years that we've got to do that," said fellow board member Ayn Wieskamp. "She cares about all those cultures, and she made us care about that issue." This advocacy was not separate from her trail work — it was integral to it. For Lane, protecting land always meant protecting the stories of the people who had lived on it.

📚

Historian & Author

Alongside her career in elected office, Beverly Lane pursued an equally significant vocation as the San Ramon Valley's most dedicated popular historian. As founding president and long-serving curator of the Museum of the San Ramon Valley, she built an institutional home for the region's historical memory in the historic Danville Train Depot. Her four published books — including Vintage Danville: 150 Years of Memories, Before BART: Electric Railroads Link Contra Costa County, and San Ramon Chronicles: Stories of Bygone Days — preserve in permanent form the stories of a community that grew too fast to stop and remember itself. "I really consider myself a student of the history here and of the community," she has said — an understatement for someone who effectively became that community's institutional memory.

In Their Own Words

Beverly Lane on trails, history, parks, and the work that still calls her.

"It has been such an honor to be on the board. We have enormous responsibilities for parks and open space in the East Bay. Our efforts to save lands from urban development and improve access have had a major impact on the quality of life for people in this area."

"We have some pretty special places here, including Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve and Ardenwood Historic Farm. We also have a number of bedrock mortars and sites where Native Americans lived thousands of years ago. If we are going to talk about the East Bay and our lands, we need to talk about the people who lived here and continue to thrive here today."

"Trails as a whole have been really important to me. I am a hiker and a walker. Las Trampas Wilderness Regional Preserve is a beautiful place to hike — it is such a presence for those of us who live in this valley — and Round Valley Regional Preserve in Brentwood. I always love my trails."

"To be part of creating a new town in an area that already had quite an impressive history, and to work with four other people who were very public-spirited and make those initial decisions, was quite an extraordinary experience. What was particularly outstanding was it was 'the first this,' 'the first that' — and trying to do them using other people's experience of what had worked, but also putting innovative ideas into it. That was just great fun."

"I'm interested in how the cities evolved and how the county works and how people decide to do what they do. The decisions people make are interesting, and I like to listen to them and see how they explain what they want in their own community."

"I won't miss the meeting demands. However, if you are going to be in an elected office, the Park District board is the best."

— Beverly Lane, Director Emerita, EBRPD Ward 6, 1994–2022

Legacy & Ripple Effects

Beverly Lane's most enduring contributions are the institutions she built, the landscapes she protected, and the precedents she set — all of which will shape Contra Costa County's civic and natural life long after her formal service ended.

🚴

The Iron Horse Trail

The 32-mile Iron Horse Regional Trail — the most heavily used multi-use trail in central Contra Costa County — stands as the most visible physical monument to Lane's advocacy. Running from Concord to Pleasanton through the heart of suburban Contra Costa, it serves millions of annual users as a recreational corridor and active-transportation commute route. It was her signature project long before she joined the EBRPD board, and she devoted 28 years to extending and protecting it.

🏛️

Museum of the San Ramon Valley

The Museum of the San Ramon Valley, which Lane co-founded and for which she served as founding Board president and longtime curator, remains the institutional home of the region's historical memory. Housed in the historic Danville Train Depot, it is a permanent civic resource for residents, researchers, students, and anyone who wants to understand how the San Ramon Valley became what it is today — and what it once was before the freeways came through.

⚖️

Thurgood Marshall Regional Park

The 2,500-acre Thurgood Marshall Regional Park — Home of the Port Chicago 50, which Lane helped plan and advocate for over 13 years, represents one of the most historically significant park dedications in the East Bay Regional Park District's modern era. It honors both a civil rights giant and 50 Black Navy sailors whose courage helped end military segregation — a park whose very name reflects Lane's insistence that land preservation and historical justice are inseparable missions.

🌾

Borel Agricultural Park

The future Borel Agricultural Park in Danville — reaching its key development milestone in 2024, two years after Lane's retirement — will preserve a heritage walnut orchard and educate the public about the agricultural history of a valley that was once one of California's most productive farming landscapes. Her successor on the board, John Mercurio, explicitly credited Lane as the project's essential champion through years of financial and planning obstacles.

🌱

Cultural History in the Parks

Lane's most intangible but perhaps most durable legacy is the institutional shift she drove within EBRPD toward systematic documentation and stewardship of the cultural history embedded in the region's parklands. Her sustained advocacy — described by colleague Ayn Wieskamp as years of "beating on" the board — transformed the district's sense of mission to encompass Native American heritage sites, Mexican rancho landscapes, and early settler history alongside its traditional natural-resource mandate.

📖

Four Books, One Valley's Story

Beverly Lane's four published histories of the San Ramon Valley constitute a permanent documentary archive of a place that was changing faster than most communities can absorb. From the electric railroads that predated BART to the 150-year sweep of Danville's growth, her books are the definitive popular account of how this corner of Contra Costa County became what it is — and why what came before matters. They will be read, cited, and relied upon by historians for generations.

"We have enormous responsibilities for parks and open space in the East Bay. Our efforts to save lands from urban development and improve access have had a major impact on the quality of life for people in this area. We have some pretty special places here — and if we are going to talk about the East Bay and our lands, we need to talk about the people who lived here and continue to thrive here today."

— Beverly Lane, EBRPD Director Emerita, Ward 6 (1994–2022)