Antioch’s Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve offers visitors a unique opportunity to learn about California’s rich mining history.
“It’s not often that you get to go to a park and go underground in a mine that used to be an operational mine,” East Bay Regional Parks naturalist Jessica Kauzer says.
“Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve is definitely one of the Bay Areas hidden gems because it’s something most people haven’t seen before,” East Bay Regional Parks naturalist Jaclyn Caldwell adds.
Underground tours allow visitors to step back in time to explore how coal miners lived and worked.
“Being a coal miner here was definitely a difficult job and labor-intensive job,” Caldwell shares.
“When you come and see the rails on the ground, the carts, the shifters office, everything you see here is of the time period,” Kauzer explains, “getting to experience what someone almost a hundred years ago would have experienced.”
Aside from coal, Black Diamond Mines Preserve also shares the areas extensive sand mining history.