Published June 25, 2025 · Last updated: October 3, 2026
By the early 1960s, one of the last large walnut orchards in south San Ramon was surrounded by a landscape undergoing rapid suburban development. The orchard, planted in two phases beginning around 1940, occupied land that would soon be divided among several builders and converted into housing tracts.
Rather than disappearing all at once, the walnut grove became part of the transition. Volk-McLain, H. C. Elliott, Tom Gentry, and Brown & Kauffmann each developed portions of the former orchard, and several of the resulting neighborhoods incorporated mature walnut trees into their lots, streets, and marketing.
 |
| Map of the last walnut orchard in south San Ramon, circa 1961. Old-growth orchard planted about 1940; north orchard planted about 1955. |
Subdividing the orchard
As the new owners of the orchards, Volk-McLain began building homes in the eastern portion of the old-growth grove in 1963 with the Country Club Park housing tract.
By the middle of the decade, Volk-McLain was moving out of homebuilding and began selling undeveloped portions of its San Ramon Village property to other developers. One of the earliest was H. C. Elliott, who acquired a large tract in 1963 that included part of the remaining walnut orchard.
Elliott developed the southern portion of that property as the Crestview housing tract, but did not extend the tract into the orchard to the north. Instead, he sold the undeveloped northern portion, including the remaining walnut grove, to Brown & Kauffmann. The builder would go on to develop Walnut Hills on that land, making the mature trees a central part of the tract's identity and marketing.
 |
| February 1966 Oakland Tribune—H. C. Elliott, S. H. Kauffmann, and Wayne R. Brown review plans for Walnut Hills, the housing tract Brown & Kauffmann would build on orchard land acquired from Elliott. |
Elsewhere, Tom Gentry acquired the younger northern orchard along with additional land in the old-growth grove. He later developed those areas as Oak Creek and The Orchards, continuing the conversion of the former agricultural landscape into suburban neighborhoods.
What had once been a continuous orchard was now being divided among multiple developers, each building a different piece of the expanding San Ramon Village.
 |
| Annotated aerial map of the former walnut orchards in San Ramon, California. The northern younger orchard was subdivided by Tom Gentry to build the Oak Creek (1965) and The Orchards (1968) housing tracts. The southern old-growth orchard was subdivided by Tom Gentry to extend The Orchards tract, Brown & Kauffmann to build the Walnut Hills (1966) tract, and Volk-McLain to build the Country Club Park (1963) tract. Every home in these tracts came with at least one walnut tree. Few, if any, remain today. Base imagery from Apple Maps. |
Marketing the orchard
As the former orchard was divided into housing tracts, the mature walnut trees became part of the sales pitch. Developers did not simply describe the land as open space waiting to be cleared; they presented the surviving trees as an amenity that could give new homes shade, privacy, and a connection to the agricultural landscape that had come before.
Country Club Park was among the first to make that appeal. A 1964 advertisement promoted lots in a “beautiful old walnut grove,” positioning the trees as an alternative to the golf-course setting that had already attracted buyers elsewhere in the development.
 |
| March 1964 Oakland Tribune ad—while the golf course lots had sold out in Country Club Park, luxury home buyers might prefer a beautiful old walnut grove. |
Tom Gentry carried the idea further with The Orchards. By 1969, the name itself had turned the former agricultural landscape into a selling point, with advertising promising “a rare opportunity—for the few who can enjoy the orchard life.”
 |
| 1969 newspaper ad for The Orchards: “A rare opportunity—for the few who can enjoy the orchard life.” |
Walnut Hills made the idea especially explicit. Brown & Kauffmann marketed homes among fully-grown walnut trees in a secluded neighborhood. The trees appeared repeatedly in advertisements and model-home imagery, making the orchard part of the identity of the new neighborhood rather than something simply left behind by construction.
 |
| April 1966 Oakland Tribune ad—the trees were inviting you to live in the Walnut Hills housing tract. |
For a brief period, the suburban landscape and the agricultural landscape overlapped. Buyers were being offered modern tract homes, but also the visual character of the walnut groves that had occupied the land for decades.
The demise of the trees
Despite the romance of orchard living, reality set in quickly.
English walnut trees (Juglans regia) were well suited to commercial farming but poorly suited to suburban landscaping. They shed leaves early, dropped messy fruit, consumed large amounts of water, and produced pollen that could aggravate allergies. Most significantly, their dense shade made it difficult to grow the lawns and other landscaping that homeowners expected.
Then came the drought. By the late 1970s, most of the remaining walnut trees had disappeared.
Timeline: development of San Ramon's last walnut orchard
- 1940: Old-growth walnut orchard planted in south San Ramon
- 1955: Younger northern orchard planted
- 1963: Country Club Park housing tract built in the eastern orchard (Volk-McLain)
- 1965: Tom Gentry launches the Oak Creek housing tract in the younger orchard
- 1965: Brown & Kauffmann begin developing Walnut Hills
- 1968: Tom Gentry launches The Orchards housing tract
- 1971: Brown & Kauffmann return to complete Walnut Hills
- Late 1970s: Most walnut trees removed as drought and the demands of suburban landscaping made the orchard increasingly impractical
A community rooted in walnut orchard history
By the time the last walnut trees disappeared, the orchard itself was gone—but traces of it remained in the tracts built among its rows. Street layouts, oversized lots, and names such as The Orchards and Walnut Hills preserved fragments of south San Ramon's agricultural past.
For a brief period, however, developers did something unusual: they tried to build around the existing landscape rather than erase it. Buyers could live among towering walnut trees that had shaded the valley long before suburban development arrived.
The experiment did not last. Commercial orchard trees were difficult neighbors for suburban homeowners, and the landscape that had once made the land valuable for farming proved increasingly incompatible with lawns, landscaping, and residential expectations. But during the years when San Ramon was changing from orchards to new-home communities, the walnuts remained long enough to leave their mark on the places that replaced them.
Comments
Post a Comment