Lafayette

Lafayette pairs oak hills and a reservoir loop with a half-hour BART ride to downtown San Francisco. The town runs along one long street, Mt. Diablo Boulevard, with the station tucked just north of it.

Why people move here

• The Lafayette Reservoir is the town’s front porch. The paved loop is 2.7 miles; the Rim Trail above it adds real climbing and a Mt. Diablo view.
• BART on Deer Hill Road, about 30 minutes to Embarcadero, with Highway 24 running alongside it.
• The Lafayette–Moraga Regional Trail starts here and runs down through Moraga on an old rail line. Briones Regional Park covers the ridge north of town.
• A downtown that stays busy after dark — the Town Hall Theatre has been staging plays here since the 1940s.

Neighborhoods

Burton Valley spreads south toward Moraga around its own elementary school. Happy Valley climbs north of the boulevard. Reliez Valley runs toward Pleasant Hill, and the Trail Neighborhood is the pocket right along the old rail corridor, close to both the trail and downtown.

Lafayette is one of three towns feeding Acalanes Union for high school, so the district picture here is elementary-plus-high-school rather than a single unified district.