Famous Residents
Mount Diablo has been the home of a number of famous residents.
James "Grizzly" Adams was a frequent visitor and resident on Mount Diablo in the mid-1850s.
Robert Walter "Bob" Jones, the first professional baseball player from Contra Costa County, was born in the "Jones House" in Irish Canyon in 1889, a current acquisition project of Save Mount Diablo.
The Mount Diablo Ranch, or Diablo Ranch, was successively owned by Robert Noble Burgess (b. 1878 - d. 1965), who founded the community of Diablo and built the mountain's first auto roads, and millionaire Walter Paul Frick (aka W.P. Frick, b. 1875 - d. 1937), who lived in Diablo and was important in the creation of the State Park in 1931, including sale of six of the first seven parcels for the new park.
Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck grew up on Brubeck Ranch near the park's Northgate entrance.
The area for the 6,500-acre (2,630 ha) Blackhawk Farm, including the mountain's southern Black Hills, was acquired from Burgess and created by Ansel Mills Easton, the namesake uncle of photographer Ansel Adams. Eventually nearly two-thirds of the farm was added to Mount Diablo State Park. The remainder was developed as the community of Blackhawk by resident developer Ken Behring.
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Famous quotes containing the words famous and/or residents:
“Those famous men of old, the Ogres—
They had long beards and stinking arm-pits,
They were wide-mouthed, long-yarded and great-bellied
Yet not of taller stature, Sirs, than you.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)