Qualla: Joaquin Miller Park

Joaquin Miller Park: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Basil D Soufi, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most city parks are designed by landscape architects. This one was planted, tree by tree, by a poet with dirt under his fingernails. Joaquin Miller bought a hundred acres of Oakland hillside in the 1880s, named the property "The Hights" -- the misspelling was intentional -- and set about transforming bare grassland into forest. He planted coast redwoods, pines, and eucalyptus by the hundreds. More than a century later, those trees tower over 500 acres of public parkland in the Oakland Hills, and the man who planted the first of them left behind not just a forest but stone monuments, a preserved house, and a cascading waterfall that still runs with water.

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Image: Basil D Soufi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Joaquin Miller Park: One Man's Forest

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jordankraemer, CC BY 3.0. Joaquin Miller was already famous when he arrived in Oakland -- a poet celebrated in London drawing rooms for his romantic verses about the American frontier. But on his hilltop he became something closer to a gardener with literary ambitions. He planted trees obsessively, and no...

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Image: Jordankraemer | CC BY 3.0

Joaquin Miller Park: Monuments on the Ridge

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Map of California highlighting Alameda County.svg David Benbennick derivative work: ויקיג'אנקי, Public domain. Miller did more than plant. On the high ground to the north of his home, he erected rough stone monuments to the figures he most admired: Moses, the explorer John C. Fremont, and the poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. These were not polished memorials commissio...

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Image: Map of California highlighting Alameda County.svg David Benbennick derivative work: ויקיג'אנקי | Public domain

Joaquin Miller Park: The Cascade and the Amphitheater

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Below the Woodminster Amphitheater, water flows down a terraced stone cascade built in 1941 and dedicated to California's writers. Designed by Howard Gilkey -- who also created the now-dry Cleveland Cascade at Lake Merritt -- the Woodminster Cascade is one of the few Depression-e...

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Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Joaquin Miller Park: Trails Through the Canopy

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Introvert, CC BY-SA 2.5. The park's 500 acres hold miles of hiking, biking, and horseback riding trails that wind through redwood groves, oak woodland, and open meadows with panoramic views of San Francisco Bay. On clear mornings, the view from the upper ridges stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to Mo...

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Image: User:Introvert | CC BY-SA 2.5

Joaquin Miller Park: Tending the Poet's Legacy

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Midnightdreary, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fire is the great threat in the Oakland Hills, and Joaquin Miller Park sits squarely in the danger zone. The 1991 Oakland Hills firestorm burned nearby neighborhoods and demonstrated what wildfire can do in this terrain. The Friends of Joaquin Miller Park, a volunteer coalition, ...

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Image: Midnightdreary | CC BY-SA 4.0