West Berkeley Shellmound: $27M Purchase, Transfer, and Restoration

The West Berkeley Shellmound is a 5,700-year-old Ohlone sacred site at 1900 Fourth Street in Berkeley, California, believed to mark the earliest known human settlement on the shores of San Francisco Bay. After years of litigation over a proposed apartment complex on the parking lot that covered it, the 2.2-acre parcel was purchased for $27 million in 2024 and transferred to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an Indigenous-led organization that now holds the land on behalf of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation.¹²

What the Shellmound Is

For thousands of years, the site served as a burial ground, ceremonial space, lookout, and communications hub for the Lisjan Ohlone. The mound itself once stood 20 feet high and several hundred feet long, built up over millennia from layers of shells, ritual objects, mortars, pestles, projectile points, fish hooks, bone awls, disk beads, and charmstones. It was visible from miles away.¹

The destruction unfolded over more than a century. After the colonization of California, settlers hauled away shell material to fertilize farms and line streets and railroad beds. In the early twentieth century, UC Berkeley archaeologists excavated the site, removing 95 human burials and roughly 3,400 artifacts, many of which remain at the university’s Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.³ By the 1950s the mound had been leveled entirely, and a parking lot for Spenger’s Fish Grotto was built over it.⁴

What remains underground still carries sacred and archaeological importance. The site was named a Berkeley City Landmark in 2000, found eligible for the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, and recognized as eligible for the California State Register in 2004.⁵ In 2020, the National Trust for Historic Preservation added it to its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.⁶

The Fight Over Development

The developer Ruegg & Ellsworth proposed a 260-unit apartment complex on the parking lot, with some units reserved for lower-income households. Berkeley rejected the application in 2018, citing the site’s status as a sacred Ohlone shellmound and city landmark. The developer sued.⁷

An earlier plan from Blake Griggs Properties, a five-story housing and retail project, had been withdrawn in August 2018. Ruegg & Ellsworth then invoked Senate Bill 35, a 2017 state law that lets qualifying affordable housing projects bypass local permitting discretion in cities failing to meet regional housing targets.⁸

The SB 35 Ruling

The case produced the first published judicial interpretation of SB 35. In 2019, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled for the city and the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, finding the shellmound qualified as a historic structure that could not be demolished. He wrote that “a historic structure does not cease to be a historic structure or capable of demolition because it is ruined or buried.”⁸

The developers appealed and won. On April 20, 2021, the First District Court of Appeal reversed in a 3-0 decision authored by Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline. The court held that SB 35’s carve-out for historic structures applies only to existing, above-ground structures, not to buried archaeological remains. It also rejected Berkeley’s argument that as a charter city it could override the state housing law under the “home rule” doctrine, finding housing access to be a matter of statewide concern. The ruling established that local governments cannot use local historic preservation ordinances to block projects that meet SB 35’s objective criteria.⁹¹⁰

In July 2021, the California Supreme Court declined to hear a further appeal, with only Justice Leondra Kruger voting to grant review. The appellate ruling stood.⁹

What Berkeley Paid

The refusal to approve the project came with a price. In February 2024, Judge Roesch ruled the city had violated the Housing Accountability Act and ordered a $2.6 million fine. The court found Berkeley had acted in “good faith,” which held the penalty to the statutory minimum, and the money was directed into the city’s own Housing Trust Fund. Berkeley separately settled the developer’s attorney fees claim for $1.4 million, bringing the total to roughly $4 million.¹¹ Courts had also ordered the city to post a $15 million bond as collateral for damages from project delays, which as of early 2024 the city had not posted.⁷

The Grassroots Campaign

As the courts worked, a broad coalition organized to block the development and press for the site’s return to Ohlone stewardship. The effort was led by Corrina Gould, Tribal Chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation and co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.¹²

The “Save West Berkeley Shellmound and Village Site” coalition drew Ohlone tribes, Indigenous organizations, interfaith groups, environmentalists, and preservation advocates. Hundreds attended prayer ceremonies, rallies, and Berkeley City Council meetings. Public letters ran 1,800 against the development to five in favor. Activists produced short documentaries and repainted protest murals after developers covered them.¹³ A candlelit vigil in March 2021 drew hundreds after the property owners erected a six-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and surveillance cameras around the site.¹⁴

The coalition also proposed an alternative use. In 2017, Ohlone matriarchs Ruth Orta and Gould worked with Berkeley landscape architect Chris Walker on an “Ohlone Cultural Park” concept featuring a daylighted Strawberry Creek, a ceremonial dance arbor, and a poppy-covered mound with a spiral pathway.¹⁵

The $27 Million Purchase and Transfer

On March 12, 2024, the Berkeley City Council unanimously approved an ordinance authorizing the city to purchase the 2.2-acre site from Ruegg & Ellsworth for $27 million and transfer it to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, which would hold it for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation.² The ordinance’s stated purpose was to “rematriate a portion of the historic West Berkeley Shellmound to the Ohlone people from whom the land was unjustly taken.”¹⁶ The purchase settled all outstanding legal claims in Ruegg & Ellsworth v. City of Berkeley, including pending damages hearings.¹⁷

Of the $27 million, the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust contributed $25.5 million and the City of Berkeley provided $1.5 million from its general fund. The bulk of the Land Trust’s share came from a $20 million donation by the Kataly Foundation, structured as a “Shuumi Land Tax” contribution using the trust’s voluntary payment program.¹⁸¹⁹

The deed was transferred to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust on May 31, 2024.¹⁷ On July 13, 2024, hundreds gathered for a celebration that opened with a dance performed by Pomo and Ohlone tribal members in traditional regalia. Gould honored several figures central to the effort, including attorney Tom Lippe, Berkeley City Councilmember Sophie Hahn, and City Attorney Farimah Faiz Brown.²⁰

“We are using our bodies to put down those prayers because underneath this asphalt our ancestors still hear us and they are calling on us to continue,” Gould said at the celebration. “This is not the end of it. This is the beginning of a new chapter.”²⁰

What Happens to the Land Now

The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust was established in 2015 as an urban Indigenous women-led land trust dedicated to facilitating the return of Indigenous land through a process it calls “rematriation.” Because the Lisjan peoples lack federal recognition, they have no reservations or access to many federal protections, which makes private land-back mechanisms central to their cultural work.²¹

The site remains paved for now, but restoration has begun. The trust launched a capital campaign called “Let the Land Breathe” with an initial goal of $1 million to remove the concrete, demolish unsafe structures, and prepare the land with soil, seeds, and native plants.²² Pavement removal has started, with a public gathering scheduled for May 6, 2026 to mark the milestone.²³

Longer-term plans include daylighting Strawberry Creek, which currently runs underground beneath the property; building gardens and ceremonial spaces; opening a cultural center with educational exhibits; and repatriating ancestral remains taken from the site and now held at UC Berkeley’s Hearst Museum. The museum holds the remains of approximately 9,000 Indigenous people overall and is currently closed to the public to prioritize repatriation, though university officials have estimated the full process could take at least a decade.²²²⁴ In the meantime, the trust has been managing vandalism, illegal dumping, and support for unhoused people who had been living on the property.

Where the Law Is Heading

The appellate ruling in Ruegg & Ellsworth v. City of Berkeley remains binding precedent: SB 35’s streamlined approval process cannot be blocked by local historic preservation ordinances when a site holds no existing above-ground structure. That tension between California’s housing push and the protection of buried Indigenous sites is what a pending state bill would address. Assemblymember James Ramos introduced AB 1881, the California Indian Freedom Act of 2026, during the 2025–2026 session. The bill would bar government agencies from substantially burdening the religious or spiritual practices of California Indians, including access to sacred sites, unless the agency can demonstrate a compelling governmental interest pursued through the least restrictive means. It would also require early consultation with affected tribes and documentation of free, prior, and informed consent before any project that risks physically altering a sacred site. As of mid-2026, the bill remains in progress.²⁵

1
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2
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3
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4
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Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. Sogorea Te Land Trust Receives 20 Million Shuumi Land Tax Contribution From Kataly Foundation
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Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. Ohlone Allies Celebrate Transfer of West Berkeley Shellmound Site to Indigenous Hands
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ProPublica. Berkeley Professor Taught Suspected Native American Remains Repatriation
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