At my prior home in San Marcos, I built a retaining wall 30-36 inches high and 60 ft long. I built it with cinderblock faced with El Dorado Stone and with concrete caps. We regularly got compliments on that wall and it looked fantastic even after 10 years.
We started with a concrete foundation with embedded rebar sticking up in the foundation. I ran the rebar up through the cinderblocks and filled the cinderblocks with concrete. That wall isn’t going anywhere, and good luck to whoever decides to remove it in the future!
I can’t remember the costs, but cinderblocks/concrete/stone facing are all things that are easy to price out. One word of caution: the concrete caps were the most expensive part by a mile! Don’t forget to price that out too.
Finally, the one mistake I made was to rely on weep holes I put in at the bottom between the cinderblocks for water drainage. While it worked well, it meant the bottom of the wall was usually wet along the entire length. If I were to build it again, I would run perforated black plastic pipe behind the wall, exiting through the wall everything 20 to 30 feet, surrounded by crushed rock.
