City of Walnut Creek
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Walnut Creek adopted its first General Plan in 1961, with a major update in 1971 that positioned the City as a subregional retail and employment center. Between 1973 and 1975, four new elements were added—Open Space, Safety/Seismic Safety, Scenic Highways, and Noise. In 1974, voters approved a 30-year bond to purchase much of the City’s 2,700 acres of open space; the bond was retired in 2004.
Core Area amendments in 1975 and 1980 established a pedestrian-friendly downtown, emphasized urban design, limited high-rises to the BART area, and promoted mixed-use development. The 1989 General Plan focused on revitalizing the Core Area and Traditional Downtown and developing key districts such as North Gate and North Main Street.
In 1985, voters approved Measure A (a building-height limitation) and Measure H (a growth initiative later ruled invalid). In response, the City Council in 1993 amended the General Plan to manage commercial growth and update transportation policies.
The current 2025 General Plan includes seven elements: Quality of Life, Natural Environment, Built Environment, Transportation, Safety and Noise, Governance, and Implementation—reflecting the City’s ongoing commitment to a sustainable and well-planned future. With minor amendments, the 2025 General Plan has remained largely consistent since 2006.
The Housing Element—updated and State-certified in October 2023—is part of the General Plan but maintained as a separate document.
A Safety Element update is underway to integrate the City’s 2020 Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment, Emergency Management Plan, and 2025 Local Hazard Mitigation Plan. The Safety Element is part of the General Plan but maintained as a separate document.
The City is working on General Plan 2050.
Walnut Creek Timeline 1800s - Present Day
The Walnut Creek area has been home to people for thousands of years. The first known inhabitants were the Bolbones and the Saclans, tribes of the Bay Miwok linguistic group. Spanish explorers arrived in the region in 1772, and by the early 1800s, most Indigenous people had been driven from their lands.
In 1821, following the Mexican Revolution, the California territory was acquired by Mexico. Walnut Creek is located amidst the earlier site of four (4) Mexican land grants. A grant of nearly 18,000 acres in what is today the Ygnacio Valley, was made to Juana Sanchez de Pacheco, who deeded it to her two (2) grandsons, Ysidro and Ygnacio Sibrian. Ygnacio created the first roofed home in the valley in about 1850 and is the namesake of Ygnacio Valley. The grant was called Rancho Arroyo de Las Nueces y Bolbones, named after the principal waterway, Arroyo de las Nueces (Spanish for Walnut Creek) as well as for the Bolbones. Following the Mexican-American War, California became a United States territory and subsequently a state in 1850.
Walnut Creek was first known as “The Corners”, named because it was the place where roads from Pacheco and Lafayette met. Today, those “corners” are at the intersection of Mount Diablo Boulevard and North Main Street. The town’s first American settler was William Slusher, who built a dwelling on the bank of Walnut Creek, called Arroyo de las Nueces, in 1849. In 1855, Milo Hough of Lafayette built a hotel named Walnut Creek House in The Corners. A blacksmith shop and a store soon joined the hotel, and a year later, Hiram Penniman (who built Shadelands Ranch) laid out the town site and realigned the Main Street of today.
Continued growth led to the establishment of a United States Post Office in December 1862, around which time the community was renamed Walnut Creek. The Southern Pacific Railroad service arrived in 1891. On October 21, 1914, the City, and the surrounding area of 500 acres, were incorporated as the eighth city in Contra Costa County. With the opening of the Broadway Shopping Center, Contra Costa County’s first major retail center, in 1951, the City took off in a new direction, and its population more than tripled from 2,460 in 1950 to 9,903 in 1960.
In the early 1970s, faced with rapid growth, the City and the public moved to preserve the open space surrounding Walnut Creek. In 1974, Walnut Creek voters approved a $6.7 Million bond measure that allowed the City to purchase 1,800 acres of undeveloped hillsides, ridge lines, and park sites. Walnut Creek owns parts of Lime Ridge Open Space, Shell Ridge Open Space, Acalanes Ridge Open Space, and Sugarloaf Open Space.
In the 1990s and 2000s, many of City’s current municipal buildings were built including a renovated City Hall, the Lesher Center for the Arts, the Shadelands Arts Center, Veteran’s Memorial Plaza, and the Walnut Creek Library in Civic Park. The current East Bay Regional Park Iron Horse Trail, used by walkers, runners, and bikers, runs over what used to be portions of the Southern Pacific Railroad line and the Antioch/Pittsburg/Bay Point – SFO Line of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) serves Walnut Creek with a station adjacent to Interstate 680. Walnut Creek, the actual waterway, has been routed underneath downtown through a series of tunnels from near the Walnut Creek Library to south of Broadway Plaza.
Today, Walnut Creek is the vibrant home of nearly 70,000 residents and a large number of guests that come to the City for work, recreation, and to enjoy the vibrant downtown amenities.
As a general law city, the City of Walnut Creek operates under a City Council/City Manager form of government with five (5) City Council members elected at large, serving staggered four (4) year terms. The City employs approximately 388 regular employees and fire protection services are supplied by the Contra Costa Fire Protection District. Official City business is administered by the City Manager’s Office. The City Council assumes responsibility for the adoption of this Plan and the City Manager will oversee its implementation.