Some of the large trees here were originally planted by Captain Thomas and managed to survive the devastating fire of 1923 which swept through this part of Berkeley.

Every Fourth of July, he fired off an old civil war cannon from "Fort La Loma", a plaza he constructed up the hill from his home.

[5] In the 19th century, a stone quarry was opened at the head of Codornices Creek, abutting the north boundary of the La Loma Park tract.

[citation needed] A number of notable people have lived in the La Loma Park/Nut Hill area over the years, including many professors from the University of California, Berkeley, among them, J. Robert Oppenheimer and his nemesis-colleague, Edward Teller.

Hillside was closed as a public school both because of a declining school-age population and because it sits immediately adjacent to the Hayward Fault, which runs directly behind it on La Loma Avenue.

One of their efforts included subsidizing the northward extension of the Euclid Avenue streetcar line from Hilgard to the Berryman Reservoir, which today is adjacent to Codornices Park and the Berkeley Rose Garden.