Around East County: New exhibit coming to Antioch’s Black Diamond

There’s a lot of history in the hills around East County, and the East Bay Regional Park District is working to build some more period displays to help remind people of the past. Antioch’s Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve has long been a place where school-age students have been able to discover local history right in their own backyards. The park district is closing down the mines this summer and building a new exhibit to give yet another perspective about local history.

The plan is to close down the Hazel-Atlas Mine and Greathouse Visitor Center from now until Sept. 10 while the new exhibit is installed. No mine tours will be available during the construction period. The park district will add a new coal mine to the existing silica sand mine and exhibit.

“The new Black Diamond Coal Mine exhibit, built into the existing Hazel-Atlas silica sand mine, will be an immersive experience taking visitors into a recreated 1870s coal mine,” said Dave Mason, the EBPRD’s public information supervisor.

From the 1860s through the early 1900s there were five thriving coal mining towns that encompassed what we know of today as the Black Diamond Mines park. Those towns included Nortonville, Somersville, Stewartville, West Hartley and Judsonville. As the location of California’s largest coal mining operation, nearly 4 million tons of coal or what was referred to as “black diamonds” were removed from the earth.

By the 1920s two of the towns, Nortonville and Somersville, were deserted. The mining company then turned the Somersville site into a sand mine where they pulled sand (silica) from the earth that was used to make glass for Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. in Oakland, while in Nortonville they mined foundry (casting) sand for Columbia Steel Works.

“Adding the coal mine exhibit will allow people to see what it was like to be there in coal mines in the time period the coal mines were here,” Mason said.

The display will not allow people to see inside an actual coal mine, like the Hazel-Atlas mine tours do, but will rather be a display area where people can experience the site and sounds of working in the original coal mining operation nearly 150 years ago. The new exhibit is expected to host a grand opening in the spring. In the meantime, Black Diamond Mines park is still open for hikes, and the Sidney Flat Visitor Center, located at park headquarters, will be open on weekends during the summer from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is free. Parking fee is $5 per vehicle on weekends and holidays.

Fireworks takeback program: While setting off fireworks is a fun way to celebrate July Fourth, the fire department is reminding everyone that the use of fireworks is “illegal and dangerous” in East County. To help stop the risk the East Contra Costa Fire Protection District has implemented a fireworks takeback program.

“Fireworks are illegal and dangerous both for the people who use them and, in current high-fire-risk conditions, for everyone around them,” said ECCFPD Chief Brian Helmick. “This program gives our citizens an opportunity to safely dispose of fireworks before they can cause injury, wildfires or worse.”

The district is offering three dropoff locations and times where people can bring in illegal fireworks. On June 29 from 9 a.m. to noon, fireworks can be dropped off at Station 59, 1685 Bixler Road in Discovery Bay, and Station 53, 530 O’Hara Ave. in Oakley. On June 30 from 9 a.m. to noon, fireworks can be dropped off at Station 52, 201 John Muir Parkway in Brentwood.

Roni Gehlke can be reached at oakleynow@comcast.net.