Parks and the outdoors in Pleasanton

24 parks, gardens, beaches and walks in and around Pleasanton.

Ranked with the travel guide's picks and well-known places first.

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Alviso Adobe Community Park
Opened in 2008, this restored community park gives visitors a glimpse of the history of the Amador Valley, including interpretive displays of early Ohlone culture before the Spanish arrival, the years of Ranchos managing herds of cattle on the Rancho Santa Rita Mexican Land Grant, and a replica of an American Meadowlark Dairy in the early to mid-20th century. The star focus of this interpretative park is a rare original American adobe house, constructed in 1854 by Francisco Alviso, that was continuously in use until 1969. The Alviso Adobe is restored and on display furnished as it would have been in the 1920s. Visitor center/dairy has activities for kids; grounds have tables for picnics. Parking at south end.
Wed-Sun 10AM-4PMFree
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Augustin Bernal Park
This is a Pleasanton city park next to #Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park. It is similar in almost every aspect to its neighbor, except that it's smaller.
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Bernal Community Park
Bernal Community Park is part of a larger plan to move the civic center from Old Bernal Avenue to Pleasanton Avenue towards the south of the city. Although this new civic center has not been constructed, the local park has been constructed. It includes a small area of newly-planted oak woodlands, along with a sports park.
Free
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Brushy Peak Regional Preserve
Brushy Peak Regional Preserve is an EBRPD park northeast of Livermore. The public trails do not lead to the top of the peak, but they go around the general area. There are a few trails in the park, and the main loop is about four or five miles (7 km) in length.
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Callippe Golf Course
A golf course, restaurant, and hiking destination in the south of Pleasanton. In the Happy Valley region, the countryside is beautiful. You can also hike in the region.
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Callippe Preserve
Callippe Golf Course
Callippe Preserve is known to most Pleasantonians as a golf course; however, there is a nearly 4-mile (6-km) trail around the golf course and local ranching areas. The trail can get muddy in winter, though, and is not easy to find. But it does give those from outside of Pleasanton an idea of the local flora and countryside in general.
Trail is free
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Castlewood Country Club
A first-class country club located in the Foothills community in western Pleasanton. For those who have money to spend and to want to have the finest experience possible in Pleasanton, this is the place to go. It is situated on the side of Pleasanton Ridge, not very far from the regional park, although it is not along the road to the park.
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Concerts in the Park
The concerts are held weekly on Friday nights in the summer. They feature a wide range of musical genres and are open to the public at Delucchi Park. People often come several hours early to get a spot in the park.
Free
See
Firehouse Arts Center
Opened in 2010, the Firehouse Arts Center is the City of Pleasanton's historic 1929 Fire House One renovated and expanded into an arts center featuring the 230-seat Firehouse Theater, Harrington Gallery of fine arts, two large arts classrooms, and a grand lobby for receptions and events. The transformed facility also offers a pedestrian connection from Main Street to the expanded Lions Wayside Park.
See
Hacienda Business Park
This isn't the best place for travelers to visit if they don't have much time on their hands, but it's an interesting place to visit if you do not know what else to do with yourself. Two factors are what make Hacienda Business Park visually interesting: the architecture of the street signs and the business park's history. First, the unusual traffic lights and street signs are gigantic square structures that are built across the roads, and they are accentuated by what immediately surrounds them. Second, the history of the park: Hacienda Business Park was built around the 1980s when Pleasanton began to look like it does today, and Hacienda Business Park replaced ranching and farming country. Within a few years, what is now northern Pleasanton went from being countryside to an important part of the City of Pleasanton. However, the plans of the developers to turn Hacienda Business Park into one of the world's great business parks did not succeed — the wide boulevards in the business park are surprisingly empty, giving the business park a near-abandoned feeling sometimes.
Eat
Hap's Original
Hap's has an old-school cocktail sign visible from Main Street. From there you might think it's an old watering hole until you walk up to the restaurant, and the upscale nature of the establishment becomes evident. This is an American Steak House, with fantastic steaks and somewhat pricey side dishes. Meals are ala carte. Stop in the bar for a Manhattan before dinner.
Moderately expensive
Eat
India Garden
This is a rather interesting restaurant because it probably is the most aroma-producing eatery in Pleasanton.
In the $10s for an entree - of course, rice and bread would be more
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Ken Mercer Sports Park
This is a more than half-mile-long city park dedicated completely to sports activities. A few summer camps operate here.
See
Main Street Green
There is a statue in this small park at the northern end of downtown. A path goes to the Arroyo del Valle creek that runs alongside the park.
Drink
McKay's Beer Garden
Towards the southern end of downtown. In the front is a nice patio area where statues were displayed before the beer garden was established.
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Morgan Territory Regional Preserve
This is a fairly large park with many miles of hiking trails that is north of Livermore. Morgan Territory, as it is usually called, consists of some oak woodlands, streams, canyons, and grass-covered plateaus.
Eat
Oasis Lounge
Serves Mediterranean food and drink in downtown Pleasanton. Oasis has been in Pleasanton for many years and has a good location in downtown, although very limited parking in its main parking lot. There is a lot of seating for the indoor section of the restaurant and also some seating in a garden setting outside the restaurant. However, the downside with sitting outside is you get the sound of all the traffic that goes along Ray Street into downtown Pleasanton, then turns left onto Main Street for a short section (right in front of the Oasis Restaurant), and then turns right onto St. John Street toward Peters Avenue.
Buy
Pleasanton Farmers' Market
Farmer's Market operates every Saturday morning on the section of West Angela Street between Main Street and First Street. They close this section of Angela Street so you can walk along it and buy food items, donate to causes, or learn about elections or events in the booths that go along this closed section of the street.
Sat mornings
See
Pleasanton Historic Residential District
Along with the historic buildings in commercial district of downtown Pleasanton, there are several blocks of well-maintained older homes which are accessible along Neal Street to the south of downtown. Particularly around Lighthouse Baptist Church, there are several homes dating back to the 1800s. Many of these buildings have nice gardens, along avenues of tall trees. The area has a lot of steep hills, similar to that of San Francisco, so walking around the area could be strenuous to some.
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Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park
This regional park features the mountainous ranching country of the Diablo Range in California. The park has miles of rugged country, including oak forests and grasslands. The highest ridges are about 2,100 feet (640 m); most of the ridges are at least 1,000 feet (300 m).
Free
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Shadow Cliffs
The park was once part of the quarry, but the excavated land is now Shadow Cliffs Lake. It includes a couple miles of trails around the lake and a popular lakeside beach. However, be prepared for the strong barbecue odors encountered around the grills near the lake.
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Sunol Regional Wilderness
This large wilderness area is a popular, fairly easy-to-reach park south of Pleasanton. Several trails lead from the park's trailheads into the mountain ranges around the park. There is a Sunol Regional Wilderness visitor center near Geary Road. Sunol Wilderness is connected to Del Valle Regional Park and Mission Peak via the Ohlone Regional Wilderness Trail.
Do Not mapped
3rd Thursdays Art Walk
The 3rd Thursdays MerchantArts Walk is a collaborative event bringing together local downtown merchants, arts groups and area artists in an effort to continue adding interesting and lively events to Downtown Pleasanton. It's a nice walk, on a nice evening, and an opportunity to join the community, support local artists and help this community thrive.
6:30-9PMFree
Do Not mapped
Del Valle Regional Park
This park is closer to Livermore than Pleasanton but is still well under an hour's drive from anywhere in either city. At the center of this EBRPD park is Lake Del Valle, but there are several beautiful rock formations in the park as well. There are scores of miles of trails in the park that go through the hills and mountains surrounding Lake Del Valle, and the park works as a gateway to the Ohlone Trail, which leads in the direction of one of the Bay Area's most popular climbs, Mission Peak.

Listings from the Wikivoyage guide to Pleasanton (CC BY-SA 4.0).