A Summer Evening In Emerald Hills: What The Hill Was Built For

The first thing a new arrival notices in July is the temperature drop. Coming up Edgewood Road from the 280 exit, the car thermometer usually loses four or five degrees between the freeway and the top of Jefferson. The oak canopy closes over the road, the shoulder narrows, and the sound of traffic falls off the moment the grade steepens. By the time you reach Handley Trail, you are somewhere the rest of the Peninsula does not really know exists.

Residents already know this. What most residents do not know is that the entire hillside was engineered, almost a century ago, to feel exactly this way in exactly this season.

The resort that never got un-built

Emerald Hills was