Wildcat Canyon is a narrow valley east of the Berkeley Hills in the San Francisco Bay Area, shaped in part by the active Wildcat Fault and drained northwest by Wildcat Creek toward San Pablo Bay. San Pablo Ridge borders its eastern side, and Jewel Lake and Lake Anza lie along the creek. Named for mountain lions once common there, the canyon remains largely open space, with its southern end incorporated into Tilden Regional Park in the 1930s and its northern end protected in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park. It is also remembered as the origin point of the East Bay’s most destructive early wildfire, which began there on September 17, 1923, and devastated Berkeley neighborhoods.

El Cerrito, California · USA