The hook
Frederick Law Olmsted — the man who designed Central Park — laid out this Oakland cemetery in 1863, and locals treat it as one of the East Bay's best walking parks, crowned by a row of robber-baron pyramids with a Golden Gate view.
01Why it's worth it
Olmsted designed Mountain View as a landscape first: formal avenues climbing the Piedmont hills, Italian cypress and cedar of Lebanon, fountains, and sweeping curves built for strolling a century before "cemetery tourism" was a phrase. The residents are a who's-who of the coast's founding money and talent — Domingo Ghirardelli (chocolate), Henry Durant (founded Berkeley), architect Julia Morgan (Hearst Castle), Elizabeth Short's era of mayors and governors — with the crescendo at Millionaires' Row: a line of colossal mausoleums, including Crocker's pyramid, staring down the hill at San Francisco. Locals recommend it without irony ("a cool, if a bit eerie, place to walk around"; "Millionaires Row has some great views"). It's an odd, calm, beautiful place to spend an hour thinking about what the Bay Area was before it was this.
02How to experience it
Main gate at the top of Piedmont Avenue, Oakland; open daily to visitors on foot or by car. Walk the main avenue uphill to Millionaires' Row and the upper view plots. Be what the place asks: quiet, respectful, off the grass around services. Piedmont Ave's cafes sit right outside the gate.