Niles Canyon, carved by Alameda Creek between Fremont’s Niles district and Sunol, has long been one of the East Bay’s most important corridors. It carried El Camino Viejo a Los Ángeles in Alta California, later became associated with José de Jesús Vallejo’s mills in the 1840s and 1850s, and still preserves ruins of the 1853 Vallejo Flour Mill. In 1869 the canyon became part of the western end of the First Transcontinental Railroad route to San Francisco Bay, and rail travel has remained central ever since. It also entered early film history through Essanay’s studio work from 1912 to 1916, bringing transportation, industry, and cinema together in one landscape.