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Alameda, California - Elks Club and City Hall

From Wikipedia

Alameda (/?æl??mi?d?/ AL-?-MEE-d?; Spanish: [ala?meða]) is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It spans Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island. It is adjacent to and south of Oakland and east of San Francisco across the San Francisco Bay. Bay Farm Island, a portion of which is also known as "Harbor Bay Isle", is part of the mainland adjacent to Oakland International Airport. The city's estimated 2019 population was 77,624.[11] Alameda is a charter city, rather than a general law city and adopted a council?manager government in 1916.

Early history and settlement

Alameda occupies what was originally a peninsula connected to Oakland. Much of it was low-lying and marshy. The higher ground nearby and adjacent parts of what is now downtown Oakland were the site of one of the largest coastal oak forests in the world. Spanish colonists called the area Encinal, meaning "forest of evergreen oak".[12] Alameda is Spanish for "grove of poplar trees" or "tree-lined avenue."[13] It was chosen as the name of the city in 1853 by popular vote.[14]

The inhabitants at the time of the arrival of the Spanish in the late 18th century were a local band of the Ohlone tribe. The peninsula was included in the vast Rancho San Antonio granted in 1820 to Luis Peralta by the Spanish king who claimed California. The grant was later confirmed by the Republic of Mexico upon its independence in 1821 from Spain.

Over time, the place became known as Bolsa de Encinal or Encinal de San Antonio.[15]

City development

The city was founded on June 6, 1853, after the United States acquired California following the Mexican-American War of 1848. The town originally contained three small settlements. "Alameda" referred to the village at Encinal and High streets, Hibbardsville was located at the North Shore ferry and shipping terminal, and Woodstock was on the west near the ferry piers of the South Pacific Coast Railroad and the Central Pacific. Eventually, the Central Pacific's ferry pier became the Alameda Mole, featuring transit connections among the San Francisco ferries, local trollies, and Southern Pacific (formerly Central Pacific) commuter lines.

The first post office opened in 1854.[15] The first school, Schermerhorn School, was opened in 1855 (and eventually was renamed as Lincoln School); Encinal School was opened in 1860 (and closed in 1980). The San Francisco and Alameda Railroad opened the Encinal station in 1864.[15] The Encinal area was also known as Fasskings Station in honor of Frederick Louis Fassking.[15] Encinal's own post office opened in 1876, was renamed West End in 1877, and closed in 1891.[15] The West End area was originally called Bowman's Point in honor of Charles G. Bowman, an early United States settler.[15]

On September 6, 1869, the Alameda Terminal made history; it was the site of the arrival of the first train via the First Transcontinental Railroad to reach the shores of San Francisco Bay,[16] thus achieving the first coast to coast transcontinental railroad in North America. The transcontinental terminus was switched to the Oakland Pier two months later, on November 8, 1869.

The borders of Alameda were made coextensive with the island in 1872, incorporating Woodstock into Alameda.[15] In his autobiography, writer Mark Twain described Alameda as "The Garden of California." [17]

Neptune Beach

In 1917, a private entertainment park called Neptune Beach was built in the area now known as Crab Cove. Often compared to Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, the park was a major recreation destination in the 1920s and 1930s. The original owners, the Strehlow family, partnered with a local confectioner to create treats unique to Neptune Beach. Both the American snow cone[18] and the popsicle[19] were first sold at Neptune Beach. The Kewpie doll, hand-painted and dressed in unique hand-sewn dresses, became the original prize for winning games of chance at the beach ? another Neptune Beach innovation.[20][21] The Strehlows owned and operated the beach on their own. They filled in a section of the bay to add an additional Olympic-size swimming pool and a roller coaster, which must have given riders a tremendous view of the bay. The Cottage Baths were available for rent.

Neptune Beach's two large outdoor pools hosted swimming races and exhibitions by such notable swimmers such as Olympian Johnny Weissmuller and Jack LaLanne. Weissmuller later starred in films as the original Tarzan character. LaLanne started a longlasting chain of health clubs and appeared on television. The park closed down in 1939 because the Great Depression left many people without much money, the completion of the San Francisco?Oakland Bay Bridge changed traffic patterns, people avoided paying the admission price, and the rise of car culture gave people many more choices for recreation destinations.

Once the Bay Bridge was complete, the rail lines, which ran past the entrance to Neptune Beach on the way to the Alameda Mole and the Ferry, lost passengers in great number as people shifted to automobiles. People began using their cars to escape the city and the close suburbs like Alameda and traveled further afield in California. More distant locations appealed to cash-rich San Francisco tourists in the postwar years. Youngsters in town became aware of ways to avoid paying the dime for admission to the park. Strong swimmers or waders could sneak in on the bayside just by swimming around the fence.

Some resort homes and buildings from the Neptune Beach era still exist in present-day Alameda. The Croll Building, on the corner of Webster Street and Central Avenue, was the site of Croll's Gardens and Hotel, used as training quarters for some of the greatest fighters in boxing history from 1883 to 1914.[22] James J. Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jim Jeffries, Jack Johnson, and several other champions all stayed and trained here.[23] Today, this preserved building has been adapted for retail and restaurants.[24] Neptune Court, a block away on the corner of Central and McKay avenues, is also a surviving building from the resort era.

The vast majority of the Neptune Beach structures ? the hand-carved carousel from the world-famed Dentzel Company, the Ferris wheel, the roller coaster, and other rides ? were auctioned off in 1940, yielding pennies on the dollar of their original cost. the city did not construct any swimming facilities or develop a local beach to replace that of Neptune Beach.

Street, and transportation lines in Alameda in 1937

When the railroad came to town in 1860s, Park Street developed as the major thoroughfare of the city. After the main Alameda train station was located here, residents of Old Alameda pulled up stakes and moved across town to the new downtown. The street's location was chosen by two landowners who wished to attract tenants and development to their land. They designated their mutual property line as Park Street.

The need for expanded shipping facilities and increased flow of current through the estuary led to the dredging of a tidal canal through the marshland between Oakland and Alameda. Construction started in 1874, but it was not completed until 1902, resulting in Alameda becoming an island.[25]

Most of the soil from the canal dredging was used to fill in the nearby marshland. The area of Alameda called Bay Farm Island is no longer an island but is attached by fill to Oakland. In his youth, author Jack London was known to take part in oyster pirating in the highly productive oyster beds near Bay Farm Island, today long gone.

The Alameda Works Shipyard was one of the largest and best-equipped shipyards in the country. Together with other industrial facilities, it became part of the defense industry buildup before and during World War II, which attracted many African-American and European-American migrants from other parts of the United States for the high-paying jobs. In the 1950s, Alameda's industrial and shipbuilding industries thrived along the Alameda Estuary. This was the site of operation of the world's first-ever, land-based, containerized shipping crane.

In the early 21st century, the Port of Oakland, across the estuary, has become one of the largest ports on the West Coast. Its operators use shipping technologies originally experimented within Alameda. As of March 21, 2006, Alameda is a "Coast Guard City", one of seven then designated in the country. As of 2018, it is one of twenty-one within the country.[26]

In addition to the regular trains running to the Alameda Mole, Alameda was also served by local steam commuter lines of the Southern Pacific (initially, the Central Pacific). Alameda was the site of the Southern Pacific's West Alameda Shops, where all the electric trains were maintained and repaired. These were later adapted as the East Bay Electric Lines. Southern Pacific's electrified trains were not streetcars, but full-sized railroad cars that connected to the mainland via bridges at Webster Street and Fruitvale (only the latter bridge survives today). The trains ran to both the Oakland Mole and the Alameda Mole. A line that ran between the two moles was dubbed the "Horseshoe Line" for the shape of the route on a map. Soon after completion of the Bay Bridge, Alameda trains connected directly to San Francisco by the lower deck of the bridge. The ferries became unnecessary.

In the 1930s Pan American Airways established a seaplane port along with the fill that led to the Alameda Mole. This was the original home base for the China Clipper flying boat. In 1929, the University of California established the San Francisco Airdrome located near the current Webster Street tube as a public airport. The Bay Airdrome had its gala christening party in 1930. The airfield was a busy place, as an early home base for Coastal Air Freight, Varney Air Lines, West Coast Air Transport, Western Air Express, the Transbay Air Ferries, and Boeing's Pacific Air Transport. The Airdrome was closed in 1941 when its air traffic interfered with the newly built Naval Air Station Alameda (NAS Alameda).[27] With the advent of World War II, a vast stretch of the marshy area southwest of the Alameda Mole was filled and the NAS Alameda established. This major Naval facility included a large airfield, as well as docks for several aircraft carriers. It closed in 1997.

Starting in the 1940s and continuing into the 1970s, multiple proposals were considered to build a highway bridge from Alameda to the San Francisco Peninsula, known as the Southern Crossing.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit is currently studying the creation of a second Transbay Tube; some potential alignments would bring BART service to Alameda Island.

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