|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Years after retiring from a decades-long career in public office representing the San Ramon Valley, Beverly Lane continues to be a prominent figure in the region and an authoritative voice on its history, marked by her latest book “Danville: Heart of the San Ramon Valley”.
Released earlier this year, the title is the first widely distributed public history book dedicated specifically to the town as well as a culmination of Lane’s dedication to the region and to local history.
Lane has been both documenting that history and serving as part of it for going on 50 years. The former Danville councilmember and mayor was among the town’s first elected officials when it was incorporated in 1982, going on to serve on the East Bay Regional Park District Board of Directors for more than 25 years — all while exploring and educating the public about the lesser-known facets of San Ramon Valley History.
The latest book tells the story of Danville starting from long before its establishment as a farming, ranching, and railroad outpost in the late 20th century, characterized by a “history of change and growth in an ideal setting”, Lane wrote.
The region’s natural beauty and weather have always been a key in drawing human civilization to the area, according to Lane, offering an “enviable quality of life” for thousands of years prior to Spanish colonization of the Bay Miwok Tactan tribe that inhabited what is now known as Danville.
Spanish colonization and other prominent events in national and international history have also been central forces that impacted the region in unique ways, according to Lane’s book, including the rush of new faces immigrating to the area during the Gold Rush, the emergence of the railroad and the automobile, impacts of the Great Depression, and the town’s development as a post-World War II suburb in the decades leading up to its incorporation.
Despite the influence of broader cultural and historical events, Danville was an outlier in some regard over key social and political changes, including serving as a stronghold for Southern sympathizers during the Civil War and one of the only parts of California to vote against President Abraham Lincoln, and to vote against women’s suffrage in 1911 – despite prominent displays from dissenting voices on both topics documented in Lane’s book.
There are also distinct local characters and events with national impacts whose stories Lane seeks to capture, such as Eugene O’Neill’s later career and rise to ongoing international fame, and Danville pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and his “Miracle on the Hudson” landing.
The book’s final chapters, centered on the town’s evolution over the past 50 years, tell the tale of its incorporation and of its earliest elected officials – including Lane herself – and the ways in which it continues to be distinct yet influenced by the world at large.
“Danville: Heart of the San Ramon Valley” is available online and in bookstores, with signed copies available at the Museum of the San Ramon Valley – as well as potential meetings with its author, who spends hours per week volunteering at the museum.
