TractTales | The neighborhoods that built the Tri-Valley

Published June 15, 2026 Long before Dublin became a city, its first suburban neighborhoods were built as part of San Ramon Village, Volk-McLain's master-planned community that transformed former ranchland across what are now Dublin and San Ramon into one of the Tri-Valley's earliest suburban developments. The Dublin portion of San Ramon Village began with a series of housing tracts that today are largely absorbed into Dublin's identity. Their streets were once marketed as part of the larger San Ramon Village vision. San Ramon Village, Brighton Circle, Glenoaks, Barkley Square, Villa de San Ramon, Appletree, and Ecco Park were separate housing tracts within the Dublin portion of the planned community. Beginning in 1960, Volk-McLain planned more than just homes. Schools, shopping centers, parks, utilities, and neighborhoods were designed together as part of a complete suburban village for a rapidly growing valley. The Dublin portion of San Ramon Village reveals how that v...

Published June 13, 2026 Today, the housing tracts around Pine Valley Road form one of San Ramon's most established residential areas. Streets lined with mature trees, established homes, and schools give little indication that the area was once among the fastest-growing sections of the valley. Unlike the tracts around Montevideo Drive, which marked the final chapter of the San Ramon Village master plan, the Pine Valley area represents something different. It captures the moment when the original San Ramon Village vision continued without the company that created it. By the late 1960s, the term "San Ramon Village" had largely disappeared from advertisements and newspaper coverage. Developers were no longer selling a future community. They were building homes as quickly as possible for the thousands of families arriving in the valley. Between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, former orchards and open fields gave way to a patchwork of housing tracts built by some of Northern C...

Published June 12, 2026 Today, the housing tracts around Montevideo Road blend seamlessly into the rest of South San Ramon. Drivers pass through winding streets on their way to schools, parks, and shopping centers without giving much thought to how the neighborhood came together. Yet the Montevideo area represents something significant in San Ramon history: the final major phase of the original San Ramon Village master plan. While earlier neighborhoods marked the beginning of suburban growth in the valley during the early 1960s, Montevideo tells the story of how that vision was completed. Over little more than a decade, the area evolved from open land on the northern edge of the master-planned community into one of San Ramon's most established neighborhoods. Mapping the completion of the original vision Montevideo occupies the northern edge of the original San Ramon Village master plan. The neighborhood developed in phases between the mid-1960s and late 1970s, with each tract re...

Published June 6, 2026 The Country Place housing tract arrived in 1978 during the final buildout of San Ramon Village (today’s South San Ramon), the master-planned community that had transformed thousands of acres of former ranchland into one of the East Bay's fastest-growing suburbs. Developed by Larwin Northern California, approximately 204 homes were built in one of the last undeveloped tracts near Montevideo Drive, helping complete a larger community that had been taking shape for more than a decade. Although Country Place was not among San Ramon's earliest developments, its opening reflected a renewed confidence in the housing market after the slowdown of the mid-1970s. Strong pre-sales, aggressive marketing, and rising home prices demonstrated that demand for suburban living remained strong. By the time construction was complete in 1979, Country Place had become another piece of the larger San Ramon story—a neighborhood built not on open frontier land, but on the final ...