For more than four decades, the 6.7-acre piece of land in the shadow of the north face of Mount Diablo was the scene of countless Krane family gatherings. Walter Krane filled the pond with bass. His sons Timothy and Jason built rafts and a wharf, sliding down the grassy hills on cardboard whenever mom Roseann Krane turned her back. It was a paradise.
"Everybody loved it," reminisced Roseann, who purchased the property in 1978.
Roseann, a teacher, and her husband Walter, an engineer, had more ambitious designs for the land. The couple planned to build a house in their little valley, nestled in between vacant rolling hills not far from the busy city of Clayton. But Walter changed jobs, often moving from project to project, and Roseann was never sure exactly where the family would end up. Despite securing building plans and permits and installing a septic tank, the house never materialized.
"We were going to build. Things happened," Roseann said standing near the Clayton Public Library. "That’s life."
Then last year, life intervened again in the cruelest sense when Walter was diagnosed with Leukemia. He died a month later.
With her children grown and the walk to the property too difficult for Roseann to traverse, she decided it was time to pass it on. She agreed to sell it to Save Mount Diablo, the land preservation group that since the early 70s has been buying up plots of Mount Diablo and turning them over to California State Parks.
The Krane property had long been high on the group's wish list, and the purchase would save it from the possibility of the kind of development that has claimed other nearby properties.
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"So it’s really important for wildlife," said Seth Adams, Conservation Director for Save Mount Diablo. "And if we didn’t protect it, not only would it be threatened, but we’d also likely lose this amazing resource for wildlife."
Under an option agreement, the group has a year to fundraise the $500,000 needed to buy the property, which Adams said is far below its potential value had Krane chose to sell on the real estate market.
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The property is part of what Save Mount Diablo calls its "missing mile," a swath of key properties winding through the north slope of Mount Diablo. With its spring-fed pond, the Krane property was a rare and important gem within the group's targets.
The Krane family was no stranger to Save Mount Diablo. Walter Krane, who became a fine art painter, donated a painting to the group's annual fundraiser. Their story, was interwoven into the land.
"These are not rich people," said Adams, standing on a sloping hill above the family pond. "These are middle-class people who, a teacher and an engineer, and they fell in love with this property and ultimately decided to protect it."
Adams said going forward, the land would be identified on the group's maps as Krane Pond, etching the family's time there into its permanent history. Once the sale is complete, Save Mount Diablo plans to do some restoration work with intention of eventually handing it over to the state to become part of Mount Diablo State Park.
For Roseann Krane, the idea of opening the land up to the public seemed a poetic chapter for a place that had come to mean so much to her and her family.
"I'd like everybody to have the fun that my family had," she said.
