Magee Preserve Trails in Danville: Two New Paths Near Magee Ranch

Walk to the end of most streets on the west side of Magee Ranch and you used to run into a fence line, some grazing land, and a view of hills that had been the subject of town council meetings for longer than some residents have owned their homes. That changed this past August. Two new trails opened on the open space directly behind the neighborhood, and for the first time since the fight over this land started, the ground itself has names: the Art Bonwell Trail and the Do'-yum'-bel'-le Vista Trail.

If you've lived in Magee Ranch for more than a few years, you already know the outline of the story. What you may not know is how much of it just became something you can actually walk.

Sixteen Years for Twenty-Nine Acres

The 410-acre Magee family ranch sits south of Diablo Road and Blackhawk Road, immediately west of Magee Ranch. The Magee family had farmed cattle, sheep, and walnuts on the land since 1949. A development proposal first landed at Town Hall in 2010, when SummerHill Homes applied to build 85 units. Through years of environmental review that number dropped to 78, then 70, then 69. The Town of Danville approved the 69-home project in 2013. A lawsuit followed, and a state appeals court sent the project back over inadequate review of bicycle safety impacts on Diablo Road.

Davidon Homes picked the project back up in 2019, and the Town Council approved a revised version that July. A resident group gathered enough signatures to force a public vote, and Danville voters settled it in March 2020 with Measure Y, which locked in the deal now branded Magee Preserve: 69 homes on 29 acres, with the remaining 381 acres, 93 percent of the original ranch, permanently protected as open space.

That open space bordered Magee Ranch the whole time. The stretch closest to Magee Ranch wasn't open to walkers yet.

What Actually Opened in August

Save Mount Diablo announced the new trails in late August, in partnership with Davidon Homes and the East Bay Regional Park District. Here's what's on the ground now:

• Art Bonwell Trail — named for one of Save Mount Diablo's co-founders, a longtime cyclist. The trail ties directly into a new bike path that connects to the Diablo Road bike route.
• Do'-yum'-bel'-le Vista Trail — named for the Bay Miwok word for Mount Diablo, honoring the Miwok people who lived in this valley long before the ranch existed.
• Together the two trails add more than two miles of new public access, connecting Magee Preserve's open space directly into the existing trail network at Sycamore Valley Open Space Regional Preserve.

That network isn't new. The East Bay Regional Park District held a ribbon-cutting in June 2025 for over 3.5 miles of trail across the Magee Preserve property, land the district now protects as an expansion of Sycamore Valley. What August's opening did was finish naming and formalizing the last stretch, the piece that runs closest to Magee Ranch itself.

As reported by Contra Costa News, Save Mount Diablo's executive director Ted Clement noted that the organization has "now built and opened to the public almost 10 miles of trails just in the last few years." Most of that mileage sits within walking distance of houses that, until recently, backed onto a locked gate and a decade of litigation instead of a trailhead.

The Names Carry the Rest of the Story

The names reflect people and cultural history connected to the land. Art Bonwell spent decades helping build Save Mount Diablo into the organization that eventually shaped the conservation terms of this deal. Do'-yum'-bel'-le is the Bay Miwok name for Mount Diablo, honoring the Miwok people who lived in this valley long before the ranch existed.

Neither name refers to the Magee family, the housing development, or the sixteen-year approval process. Instead, they recognize the area's conservation history and Indigenous heritage.

If the Magee name feels familiar from elsewhere in Danville, that's not a coincidence. The same ranching family's land gave its name to Hap Magee Ranch Park over in Alamo Springs, a separate 16.3-acre park with its own history. Two different Magee properties, two different chapters of the same family's Danville footprint.

The Piece Still Behind a Fence

The trail system isn't finished. The Town of Danville is currently building its own separate segment: the Diablo Road Multi-Use Trail Project, a 0.9-mile paved path along the south side of Diablo Road running from Fairway Drive to about 400 feet west of Avenida Nueva. When complete, it will connect the existing 0.5-mile Barbara Hale Trail to the 0.7-mile trail already built inside the Magee Preserve development, closing a gap the town's Trail Master Plan first identified back in 1989.

The project carries a $5.2 million budget, most of it funded through Contra Costa Transportation Authority Measure J sales tax revenue rather than town coffers. The current construction phase involves placing large retaining walls near Green Valley Creek and requires daytime traffic control on Diablo Road between Fairway Drive and Alameda Diablo. That work is expected to run through approximately October 15, 2026. The town has stated the full project should wrap by December 2026, with a scheduled pause from November through March to avoid the rainy season.

Practically, that means this fall is the last active construction window before the project goes quiet for winter. If you drive Diablo Road between Fairway and Alameda Diablo in the next few weeks, expect the same daytime lane control that's been in place through the summer.

Getting There This Fall

For residents who want to walk the new trails without guesswork, the Sycamore Valley Open Space Regional Preserve network they connect to has three established access points: the end of Sherburne Hills Road, Sycamore Valley Park at the end of Holbrook Drive, and the end of Northview Court. The Magee Preserve trails feed into this same system from the eastern side, closer to Magee Ranch, though the specific trailhead signage for the Art Bonwell and Do'-yum'-bel'-le Vista trails is new enough that it's worth checking Save Mount Diablo's own property page before heading out if you haven't walked it yet.

The longer-term picture is a trail corridor meant to eventually link Mount Diablo State Park to Sycamore Valley Regional Park and the Iron Horse Trail, filling a gap regional planners have wanted closed for over three decades. Magee Ranch sits at one end of that gap. As of this fall, for the first time, most of it is walkable.

None of this changes what Magee Ranch has always offered: large, semi-custom homes on quarter-acre-plus lots, many backing to open space, built between 1992 and 1998. What's changed is what's on the other side of that open space. A fence line that used to represent an unresolved argument now represents two named trails, a connection to a 695-acre regional preserve, and one remaining construction phase that should be finished before the rain starts.

If you're weighing a move within the San Ramon Valley, or wondering what a home backing to this specific stretch of preserved land is actually worth given the access that opened this year, Scott Thompson tracks these changes as part of the day-to-day work of representing Danville sellers and buyers. Reach out for a conversation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground, not just what the map used to show.