Holy Names College Gets Wilderness Tract for Park - Oakland Tribune - Wednesday, December 25, 1957

LAND GIFT Sister Imelda Maria, president of the College of Holy Names, accepted the deed to land adjacent to college's new campus from Robin McCrea, San Francisco engineer, shown with his wife, Madelein and son, Don.

Holy Names College Gets Wilderness Tract for Park

An area where Spanish missionary priests brought Christianity to the Indians and where the Indians themselves settled because of abundant streams has been given to Oakland's College of Holy Names.

But it was necessary for Robin McCrea, a San Francisco mechanical engineer, to "buy" the property from the city, to which he gave it in 1943, so that he again could donate it to the college.

Sister Imelda Maria, president of the College, accepted the deed to the 6.6 acre section of hill wilderness which is adjacent to the new College campus at 3500 Mountain Blvd. and which is in much the same state as it was when primitive people roamed it before the arrival of the Spanish here. The land is valued at $50,000.

McCrea, son of the late George McCrea, a Northern California architect, was raised on adjacent property. The old McCrea land contains a home, one section of which is built around an old adobe-walled chapel where priests from Mission San Jose came to conduct Mass for the vaqueros on the Rancho de San Antonio of the Peralta land grant. The acreage includes an old Indian camp site and is crisscrossed by trails leading to the abundant springs. At the camp site, crude fire pits and rock "bowls" used by the Indians in grinding flour are unchanged from the days of their use. Relics of the Indians were found throughout the area when the McCrea family first acquired the land.

The younger McCrea, a resident of Belvedere, presented the land to the city, deeding it for park use as a memorial to his father. World War II prevented any consideration of park development but studies since have indicated that the region could not be developed into a park without prohibitive cost acquiring adjacent land.

Under the deed terms, the land could not be used for any use other than for a park McCrea and City Park Superintendent William Penn Mott Jr. agreed to return of the land to McCrea so that he could give it to the College of Holy Names.

For the return of the land, McCrea is financing another memorial to his father. He will contribute $7,000 to a project that will benefit the children of Oakland.

This will be a portion of the new trout fishing and flycasting center in Leona Park, Mott said. In the Leona development, youngsters will have the chance to fish for trout stocked by the Park Department and Mott plans eventually for a "family program" under which camping instruction, fly-making and fly-casting training will be available.

The fly-casting development is almost completed now.

Holy Names College Gets Wilderness Tract for Park