My Trails into the Past

Our home in Walnut Creek, California, was located adjacent to the I-680 freeway. If you are familiar with California and our ever-growing traffic, freeways are constantly being widened. In 1988, there was to be a start of a major renovation and widening project through Walnut Creek and my parents’ home was to become a casualty. CalTrans, the transportation department for the State of California, contacts the people who own land where they want to widen and offer funds to be resettled. I believe they had real estate agents help my mother view comparable homes by price in Walnut Creek that they could move into. My mother hated them all. You see, we lived on a narrow, one-lane country road right in the middle of town. There were about a dozen houses. One side of the road was in the city limits of Walnut Creek, the other side in the county. Mature trees surrounded our homes. No sidewalks. The neighbor to our south had horses. At the end of the street was access to Las Trampas Creek. ...