Oakland Hills, Oakland, California

In recent decades, it has become the more common popular term although it remains "officially" incorrect among geographers and gazetteers.

Before the establishment of the University of California in Berkeley, the range was called the Contra Costa Hills.

This other ridge, a shutter ridge created by the Hayward Fault, lends its informal name, "Rockridge", only to the district of Oakland at its northwest end, although it extends southeast to the junction of Highway 13 and I-580 in East Oakland and includes most of the small residential community of Piedmont, California.

Plant communities are diverse, ranging from oak-grassland savanna and chaparral on sunny exposed slopes, to woods of oak, madrone, bay laurel, pine and redwoods in shady canyons.

The Oakland Hills touch the eastern border of Piedmont, California and include a section of the Claremont neighborhood, the northern part of which lies within the city of Berkeley.