Black Mountain, the highest point on Monte Bello Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains, links natural history, settlement, and conservation above the southern San Francisco Peninsula. Its slopes were shaped by nineteenth-century logging, later ranching, dairying, and winemaking, including the ranch bought by Oseo Perrone in 1885 that became Montebello Winery, now Ridge Vineyards. Land at the summit later passed from George Morell to Stanford and then to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District in 1975, displacing the commune called The Land. The mountain also gives rise to Stevens, Adobe, and Permanente creeks and stands on geologically unusual ground near the San Andreas Fault, with rare limestone formed about 100 million years ago.