San Leandro Bay Pg 1

Introduction

The San Leandro Bay is located within the city boundaries of Alameda and Oakland in Alameda County, California. You can see the San Leandro Bay as you drive from Alameda to the Oakland International Airport along Doolittle Drive.

The San Leandro Bay is an estuary. It was once surrounded by an extensive fresh and salt water marshland. Fresh water was carried down the Oakland Hills in creeks to the San Francisco Bay where it mixed with salt water in the bay, creating an environment with a complex food web that supported an immensely rich population of plant and animal life. However, almost immediately following the non-native migration of people into the area, especially following the California gold rush of 1849 and then again after the arrival of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, a major assault on the San Leandro Bay and its wildlife began.

In just 170 years the San Leandro Bay was transformed from one of the most productive bio-regions in the world -- to cement and mud. Where there was once an extensive marshland, today is an international airport, a huge coliseum complex, a 36-hole golf course, an industrial park, an old city dump. The creeks, the source of its fresh water, have been dammed, diverted, cemented-over, and buried.

The small amount of marshland that remains in the San Leandro Bay today, called Arrowhead Marsh, is believed to be "second nature" (its outcome mainly a result of human influence). It was created around 1874 when an earthen dam on the San Leandro Creek, up in the Oakland Hills, failed and washed down vast amounts of soil into the San Leandro Bay.

Ironically, the San Leandro Bay marsh's daily inundation of water, which made the area unattractive and costly to build upon, as well as early attempts to protect the area legislatively, simply left large amounts of land with few controlling interests, for later developers; who armed with new technologies, were able to drastically transform the area for their mammoth-sized projects. Although most of the San Leandro Bay area's present day uses are public, serving literally millions of people, it is debatable if the loss of this natural wonderland truly served the “public good” as early laws intended.

Just as we are born into and inherit our physical world, and those changes made to it by others who came before us, so too we inherit our beliefs and views about the world, and then build upon them and change them and make them our own. A look at the history of the dramatic changes that were made to the San Leandro Bay, over such a short period of time, and the decisions made by those who so dramatically transformed it, perhaps can help us better understand the genesis of some of our own current beliefs and values.

Early History: Native Americans, Spanish Era, Human Migration

First Known Human Inhabitants: The Ohlone Indians circa 1200 b.c. to 1800 a.d.

The first known Native Americans from the East Bay area arrived approximately 3,000 years ago. These people, known as the Ohlone Indians, enjoyed the natural abundance of the area. They hunted and fished in the marshlands, in the bay, and along the creeks. With no need to roam or move around in search of new sources of food or to fight neighbors for scarce resources, these were believed to be a peaceful people who remained in the same village locations over many generations living off the bounty of the land.

Over 400 Indian burial mounds were found around the San Francisco Bay area. One, with the remains of about 450 people was found in Alameda near Santa Clara Ave and Mound Street. It also contained "stone implements and shell ornaments." The natives decorated themselves with shells and feathers and they used stones, shells, and bones for tools (see pictures at left and right taken at Alameda Museum). The mound and its contents was "removed" in 1908. A plaque commemorating the burial mound can be found in Lincoln Park in Alameda City today (click on picture at left).

European Discovery of the San Francisco Bay area in 1772

The San Francisco Bay area lay hidden from non-native discovery until 1772. The late discovery can likely be attributed to the small opening from the Pacific Ocean to the San Francisco Bay at the Golden Gate, combined with the area being often shrouded in fog and the natural camouflage provided by the East Bay hills seen in the background of the entrance to the bay. In fact, the Bay Area was first seen by Europeans who were on a land expedition. The land was quickly claimed as being owned by Spain.

Mission San Jose Established 1797

Just seven years later, in 1797, the Spanish established Mission San Jose in the East Bay (The San Jose mission is located at 43300 Mission Blvd in what is Fremont, CA today). Ohlone Indians lived in the area. The mission raised cattle and sheep. In 1832 the mission had 12,000 cattle, 13,000 horses and 12,000 sheep which grazed between the area of the mission and Oakland. The mission was very productive and had the second highest agriculture output and the highest olive oil production of all of the California missions. Between 1825 and 1830 there were approximately 2,000 California natives living on the mission grounds. In 1833 the mission had thousands of acres of crops and grazing land stretching from San Jose to Oakland to Livermore.

In 1834 control of the missions shifted from the Spanish to the Mexicans and the Spanish Padres left. Within three years, by 1837, the San Jose Mission's land was divided into Ranchos and the mission buildings were abandoned. The natives that had been living there suddenly no longer had the support of the Mission and its way of life; finding it very difficult to adjust back to their previous ways, many of them died. ^1AA

Spanish Rancho Era circa 1820-1850

In 1820 the King of Spain granted Luis Maria Peralta, a Spanish Army officer, a 44,800 acre, 35 mile land grant (known as a "rancho"). The land was given to him in recognition for his service in the Spanish Army. The land included what are today the cities of: El Cerito, Berkeley, Albany, Oakland, Piedmont, and Alameda.

In 1842, Luis Peralta divided his land up among his four surviving sons. Antonio Peralta, his third son, received what today includes the cities of Alameda and most of Oakland.

The image at the left is from a close-up of a map that was made in 1844 - five years before the gold rush (click on it for a bigger picture). The San Leandro label on the map is not identifying a city, but refers to the water (Sand Leandro Bay and San Leandro Creek, which at this point are not too indistinguishable, they are more like one body). S. Antonio is where the entrance to the estuary between Alameda and Oakland (the inner harbor) is today. Lake Merritt hasn't been "made" yet . Lake Merritt was made in 1869 from 155 acres of "dammed tidal water" from the headwaters of Indian Slough. The land was donated by Dr. Samuel Merritt in 1867. Lake Merritt was first known as "Merritt's Lake" (map info)

Alameda can be clearly seen as a peninsula in this map of 1844. The map is over 50 years before the "estuary" and "tidal canal" was completed in 1902, which separated Alameda from Oakland and made it an Island.

The image to the right is from the same map but shows a larger area. Notice the "Pins Rouge" (redwood trees) in the Oakland Hills.

Other than maps there are very few visual references (such as photographs or drawings) during this early period. However, there are some early visual descriptions of what the environment was like at this time. In an address during the "Pioneers Picnic at Dry Creek" Judge Crane provided a first hand account of what the land in the area of Alameda County was like in the 1850s, when the ownership of the land was still largely controlled by a handful of large Spanish and Mexican land grants, with some squatters also beginning to gain some control of the land. During this period Judge Crane observes, "Nearly all of this land was still in a state of nature, unenclosed, uncultivated, and unoccupied, except as a range for herds of half a wild cattle."^1A

The Redwoods in the Oakland Hills (San Antonio Forest) are Cut Down circa 1842-1853

The first major environmental impact on the San Leandro Bay which was caused by human activity started in 1842, six years before the California Gold rush. This is the year that Don Peralta divided his land among his four sons and the same year that full-scale logging of the Oakland hills began. The Redwoods in the Oakland Hills were in an old growth redwood forest called San Antonio Forest. Visual accounts from the time indicate that the Oakland Hills may have had some of the oldest and biggest redwood trees in the world. William P. Gibbons, who in 1855 was the curator of geology and mineralogy at the California Academy of Sciences, in 1893 published “The Redwoods in the Oakland Hills”, a survey that he had made 40 years earlier describing a “sea of stumps” (in 1855) in the Oakland Hills. He found one redwood tree stump that measured “over 31 feet across at a height of four feet from the ground."⁹

Blossom Rock Trees

Two trees in the Oakland Hills were so tall that Sea Captains could see them up in the Oakland Hills after entering the Golden Gate of the San Francisco Bay. Known as the “Blossom Rock” trees, they provided the Sea Captains with a visual marker to help them navigate safely away from the “Blossom Rock”, an underwater rock near Yerba Buena Island.¹⁰ After the trees were cut down in the early 1850s a lighthouse was built on Yerba Buena Island to help guide the Ship Captains. Although many of the redwood trees in the forest were likely over 2,000 years old, in just about ten years the entire San Antonio redwood forest was virtually completely cut down. The trees were milled at saws in the Oakland Hills and the lumber was sold largely to people building the first buildings in San Francisco.

After the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906, once again there was a tremendous demand for wood in San Francisco. And once again, the San Antonio Redwood Forest was logged to provide lumber to build the city. This time however, not only the trees, which were now only second growth trees that had been growing for only about 50 years, were taken, but even the stumps were cut up and sold. This is especially unfortunate because redwood trees often grow new trees from their old stumps and their removal made it virtually impossible for the forest to ever recover. This area today, which includes two regional parks, is vastly different from the original old growth forest that existed pre 1840s; although today there are a relatively small amount of third growth redwood trees there, which are now up to 100 years old.

Undoubtedly, the elimination of the trees in the Oakland Hills had a very severe impact on the surrounding ecosystem -- including causing a vast amount of soil erosion washing soil down the creeks and into the San Leandro Bay. It is also highly likely that the removal of the trees had a cascading negative impact on a variety of the living creatures, both plant and animal, that over millennium had been intertwined and dependent on the trees being there.