Early Hunters Harvest the Bounty of the Bay

An extensive network of tidal marshlands along the San Francisco Bay's shores made an ideal resting spot for migrating birds, who used the area more than any other during their twice annual migration, during spring and fall, along the Pacific Coast Flyway . The San Leandro Bay, which is actually a bay within a bay (the San Leandro Bay within the San Francisco Bay) provided an especially well protected area and also benefited from a temperate climate, plenty of food for feeding and lots of plants for nesting.

The San Leandro Bay's mixture of fresh water, which came from creeks from the Oakland Hills flowing down to the San Francisco Bay, and then mixing with the salt water from the San Francisco Bay, created an especially rich environment where nutrients thrived, and supported a wide and rich bio-diversity of life there.²  The creeks that flowed into the San Leandro Bay included: the San Leandro Creek, Sausal Creek, Peralta Creek, East Creek, Arroyo Vejo Creek, Lion Creek and Elmhurst Creek.

An early description of the immense bird populations living in the San Leandro Bay area around 1883 was described by the Overland Monthly, "A flight of ducks one hundred yards wide came on in a seemingly endless stream that took fifteen to twenty minutes to pass."³

With the large influx of people into San Francisco following the gold rush in 1849, a market quickly developed for providing San Francisco hotels, restaurants and markets with the ducks, geese and other waterfowl living nearby in the San Leandro Bay.

The first hunters were miners, who hunted waterfowl and sold it to San Francisco restaurants and hotels in the winter months, to supplement their income when the mining work was slow.⁴ Eventually these hunters became well armed, and just as it was with the hunting of the American Buffalo, at about this same time, they hunted a docile prey with no constraint or regard to its survivability, resulting in catastrophe for the hunted^. (by 1880 the Buffalo were almost extinct).⁵ Using muzzle-loading swivel guns with barrels two and three inches in diameter and loaded with "all kinds of junk", basically buckshot, the hunters used two assistants and "animal blinds" to gather flocks of birds into a small area and then with just one shot kill hundreds of birds at a time.⁶ The savage hunting method meant that many birds were not killed but only badly wounded, and many went to waste. In the 1911-1912 hunting season it was estimated by the California State Fish and Game Department that 250,000 ducks were shot in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1918 the Migratory Bird Treaty finally put an end to the massive slaughters, however, by this time, destruction of the habitat and pollution was taking its own toll.⁷

In 1899 over 2 million pounds of oysters were harvested in the San Francisco Bay, many of them in fields off of Bay Farm Island. However, by 1910 the industry was in sharp decline, and by 1920 the business was dead because the oysters could no longer live in the now heavily polluted waters.⁸

Non-natives move in - early Alameda History 1850-1860

The following early history of Alameda's land ownership was mainly sourced from: Merlin, I., Alameda A Geographical History. sixth ed. 1977, Alameda

Early in 1851 two men, Chipman and Aughinbaugh came to Alameda to inspect it, because they were considering trying to buy Alameda from Antonio Peralta. On their trip to Alameda they found five non-Indian men living on the peninsula, all making a living off of the natural resources.

Antonio Peralta, the son of Luis Peralta who received the land from the King of Spain, agreed to sell Alameda to the two Americans Chipman and Aughinbaugh, despite Antonio's father's warning not to sell land to the American's. Antonio sold Alameda for $14,000 which he would be paid over 3 years. In order to help raise the required money to buy Alameda, Chipman and Aughinbaugh brought in another six men, who agreed to buy over half of Alameda for the same price per acre that Chipman and Aughinbaugh were paying to Antonio Peralta.

As the first property investors in Alameda, their goal was to sell at least some of their land, in order to come up with the $14,000 to pay Peralta and they were also looking to make a profit.  As a marketing scheme they offered people free transportation to visit Alameda with “plenty of free watermelon.” To help encourage sales of their lots, anyone who bought a lot and constructed a house on it within a year would receive an additional lot for free. The marketing scheme worked and over 20 lots were sold.

The first settlement in Alameda, made in the 1850s, was on the East side. Here Chipman laid out his “Town of Alameda.” He chose this spot because there was "good drainage and a well defined water front." The other side of Alameda, the West side, was considered “hinterland” before the railroads. It consisted of a wind swept forest, a vast salt water marsh area, and also had a well defined shore line.

Transportation Improvements Begin

Right from the very start, a motivating factor to the changes made in and around the San Leandro Bay area, was the financial gain that could be realized by improving transportation. Chipman and Aughinbaugh decided that to make the land they had just bought in Alameda more attractive to potential buyers they would have to improve the transportation there. They borrowed heavily and purchased a boat, which they used to run a daily ferry service between Alameda and San Francisco. This suffered a major setback shortly after it began when in January 1854 the boat blew up, destroying the boat and killing two people. They also built a plank road from Alameda to Oakland, along where High Street is today (this was before the canal was dug there). They also built a road connecting Alameda with Bay Farm Island.

In addition to the costly transportation expenses, Chipman and Aughinbaugh ran in to financial trouble when the Peralta title fell under challenge by two of the Peralta sisters, and land sales in Alameda slowed dramatically as people became uneasy that land they might buy might not be considered legally theirs. They also found that evicting squatters proved difficult and costly and many squatters were paid to leave. Alfred A. Cohen, a lawyer born in London, felt more comfortable with land titles than many others during this time. Feeling that he could tell which ones were valid, he began buying up large amounts of land in Alameda from the financially troubled Chipman and Aughinbaugh in the West End of Alameda.

In addition to residents coming to Alameda, hunters came to Alameda for the waterfowl attracted by the tidal marshes, and the white sand beaches of Alameda attracted beach goers. In the early 1860s a hamlet was established on the West side (called Woodstock), and a hotel opened that attracted San Francisco hunters and beach goers, especially on the weekends and holidays.¹

Back Yard Wells Run Dry and The Creeks get Dammed for Water

        Having a source of clean drinkable water was always a big issue for new residents of new cities, and as the cities grew in population, the need for new, larger sources of water was continually a concern being addressed by city governments.

By the 1860s back yard wells in the East Bay were beginning to run dry.

Only two streams flowed year around in the Oakland area, the Tamescal Creek and the much larger San Leandro Creek.

In 1869 an earthen dam was built on Temescal Creek creating Temescal Lake. It was the first major water reservoir in the East Bay, with 180 million gallons of water.

 In 1876 the San Leandro Dam was completed on the much larger San Leandro Creek.

San Leandro Dam created Lake Chabot, providing a three billion gallon reservoir that is still used today. Thousands of trees were planted around the San Leandro Reservoir and it was also stocked with fish.

Sediments that once washed down the creeks supplying Alameda's beach resorts with high quality sand was interrupted and erosion and other problems began to occur.

Downstream Impacts

 The many famous bathing beaches of Alameda, which lasted until the late 1930s, experienced their golden era in the 1870s to 1880s. At that time the sand of the Alameda beaches was still unimaginably magnificent, drawing thousands of visitors to them each year. However, especially after 1876, when the San Leandro Dam was completed, impacts were beginning to be felt down stream. No longer carrying the sand down to the beaches, and drastically impacting the hydraulics of the area, the quality of the natural environment began to degrade and the resorts began to emphasize non-beach recreational activities, such as boxing, dancing, and very large swimming pools. As the postcards to the left and right show, although not as special as they once were, people are still enjoying the beach when these pictures were taken in Alameda City, circa 1908.

Early Land Fill and Dredging

In addition to filling marsh area for train track roadbeds, early dredging of the San Antonio Creek to accommodate shipping also created new land where once there was marsh, and this had a big impact on the San Leandro Bay, changing its hydro-dynamics and the way water and sediments flowed. Almost immediately following the State legislature's approval of Oakland as an incorporated city in 1852, construction of shipping wharves and dredging the creek to create a shipping channel began.

As early as 1871, before the first federal dredging of the San Antonio Creek had even begun, squatters on the West side of Alameda erected dykes to hold in the dredged material as land-fill.

At the same time, residents along the South Shore of Alameda noticed the beautiful beaches were beginning to erode at an alarmingly rapid rate of about three to seven feet per year. During the initial dredging period which lasted 16 to 17 years, it was estimated that between 70 to 80 feet of the shore was lost to erosion, as a result of the “new wave patterns.” ¹¹

Beginning in 1874 a federally paid program, to improve the harbor, began serious dredging of the San Antonio Creek between Oakland and Alameda. By 1887 deep sea vessel ships were able to use the harbor (referred to locally as the estuary) all the way up to the Alice Street Bridge.

In 1882, some of the people who owned land that was being "condemned" to make a tidal canal "improvement" complained that they were being damaged, not just by the loss of the land, but also because they would be deprived from "the waters of a creek during a portion of the year" and the loss of "the use of gravel washed down upon their premises by said creek."¹¹

The material dredged from the creek to create the estuary was dumped on the land alongside it, filling in and destroying the marsh area near the creek. In 1882 the Alameda Encinal Newspaper reported that people living along the estuary between Clinton and Brooklyn (see map from 1878 at left, a large part of Oakland was once called Brooklyn) were claiming portions of land filled by the Central Pacific Railroad Company along the waterfront by erecting fences around it. ¹²

The final stage of the harbor improvement project, cutting the canal that linked the San Antonio Creek with the San Leandro Bay, which resulted in making Alameda an Island, was completed in 1902.

"Bathymetric and sedimentation studies have shown that San Leandro Bay has become progressively more shallow since the early 1900's, and that this period of increased sedimentation corresponds with the opening of the Oakland Tidal Channel. Studies have shown that the opening of this channel decreased the flushing velocity in San Leandro Bay, due to creation of opposing tidal prisms in the embayment." ^12A source: San Francisco Estuary Institute, RMP News, Regional Monitoring News Volume 4, Issue 2 Summer 1998

Early Builders on the Marsh

Some of the first builders on the marsh were explosive firms. They went to the extra expense of building on the marsh because the marsh satisfied their need for a location that was both remote from residential populations (for safety considerations) yet also nearby major metropolitan areas and nearby train and water transportation. via the San Francisco Bay.

An early land-fill project in the marsh was to create a road-bed for a train track that ran across the marsh from Oakland to Alameda (see 1898 map at left). Railroad engineers were no strangers to overcoming physical obstacles. With their initial Western terminus of the transcontinental railway in 1869 only a few miles away in Alameda (see dedication plaque located at Webster Street and Lincoln Ave at right) the train company was certainly not going to let a marsh stand in their way. So they built a one mile long trestle over the marsh.

In 1882 the train track gave way under the soft mud of the marsh, causing a major train accident. About a month before the accident, on Aug 19, 1882 the Alameda Argus reported that trains had been delayed due to a "sinking in the track where it crosses the marshland, about a mile south of San Leandro Creek", but the track had been repaired. It was speculated that the unusually high tides of the previous week caused the "softening of the ground". All seemed well, however about a month later the train derailed at the same spot, and two men were killed in the accident. There was still a considerable water depth in the marsh during high tide at this time. The Alameda Argus newspaper described how one of the men, trapped under the train's locomotive, could not be freed. As the tide began to rise, the men tried to build a temporary dyke around the man to hold back the tide. However, failing to accomplish this, the tide rose over three feet and "strong men turned away and wept at their own weakness in not being able to rescue him", when after two agonizing hours of being trapped under the train, the water finally rose over the man's nose and he drowned. ¹³

As evidence of the difficulty of building on the marsh, two weeks following the accident, the South Pacific Coast Railroad's track crews were still trying to stabilize the "sink" with land fill. A newspaper article in the Alameda Argus on Sept 30, 1882 describes the difficulty the crew was having with the repairs, "The narrow-gauge road is still experiencing difficulty with the track beyond the bridge across San Leandro Bay, where the accident occurred some two weeks ago. There seems to be no bottom to the mud there." ¹⁴

Even as late as 1898 the marsh area around the San Leandro Bay was still quite extensive (see map at upper left). However, human influence in the area can also clearly be seen. The estuary between Alameda and Oakland, connecting the San Leandro Bay with the Oakland Harbor was officially completed in 1902. Large areas of marsh along the banks of the new estuary were filled with the mud that was dredged there.

The California State Legislature got involved in controlling the marshes and submerged lands in the San Francisco Bay area following early abuses by those who bought submerged land off the coast of San Francisco and then charged high fees for ships to get past their property.

In 1879 a law was passed that prohibited the sale of tidelands within two miles of an incorporated city or town. Beginning around 1900 to encourage harbor development, the State gave grants to cities which gave them local jurisdiction over much of the tideland and submerged lands near them. In 1913 Alameda City received a grant for all the tide and submerged lands within the city boundary and out to the Alameda County line in the San Francisco Bay. Oakland received grants for submerged lands in 1909 and 1911.¹⁵

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