Albany Hill, 373-foot summit in Albany, California, US.
Albany Hill is a hill of Jurassic sandstone on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in Albany, California. It is part of an older range of hills uplifted before the Berkeley Hills, which also includes Fleming Point, Point Isabel, Brooks Island, and Potrero San Pablo. The hill rises to 91 meters (about 300 feet).
The 1772 Fages expedition recorded the hill as El Cerrito, a name later applied by the Peralta family to their Rancho San Antonio as Cerrito de San Antonio. After the town of Ocean View incorporated and renamed itself Albany in 1909, the hill took the name Albany Hill. The adjacent city of El Cerrito preserves the earlier Spanish name.
The hill's Spanish name El Cerrito, recorded by the 1772 Fages expedition, later named the neighbouring city of El Cerrito. The hill itself became Albany Hill after Ocean View incorporated and renamed itself Albany in 1909. The Ohlone name for the hill is not recorded.
The hill is reached from the west side, where the transcontinental railroad tracks once ran; the stop there was called Nobel Station. The north face keeps a pre-European oak forest, while the summit holds eucalyptus trees that attract monarch butterflies. Trails are unmarked and the slopes are steep in places.
In the late 1800s, workers for the Giant Powder Company planted eucalyptus trees around the hill to muffle explosions from their dynamite manufacturing. These trees still shape the landscape today.
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