San Leandro Bay, Alameda, CA (continued - page 3)
From Natural Wonderland to "Public Good"
by Gary Lenhart

The State's obligation to "hold lands lying beneath navigable waters in trust for purposes of commerce, navigation, and fisheries for the benefit of the people" was being continually interpreted more broadly, and the list of acceptable uses for submerged lands was continually being expanded.

In 1918 the use of submerged lands was expanded to include yacht clubs. In 1929 warehouses used to further harbor improvement were approved. In 1932 acceptable uses were expanded to include public parks, parkways, highways, and playgrounds. In 1940 street construction on filled land was approved. In 1955 "acceptable use" was broadened to include: convention, exhibit, banquet halls, restaurants, snack bars, small shops, motels, service stations, commercial and industrial buildings, baseball, basketball and other sports facilities, and more.¹⁶

The Port of Oakland was established in 1927 and by 1942 the Oakland Airport was well underway. By 1942 the train no longer crossed San Leandro Bay into Alameda. Instead, the train goes around the marsh, through Oakland, alongside where the Nimitz Freeway is today. The first runways were placed right alongside the train tracks that can be seen crossing the marsh in the map of 1898. Much of Doolittle Drive today, especially near the airport, runs directly on top of the old train track's roadbed.

The Oakland Airport

The site used for the Oakland Airport was ideal because it provided the vast large areas needed to build runways. Just as it was with the explosive firms, the location provided a perfect combination of being remote enough from residential populations, for safety considerations, yet close enough to serve major metropolitan centers (San Francisco and Oakland) with good transportation connections.

The Oakland Airport was very popular from its first day. It opened in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh. On May 20, 1937 Amelia Earhart, who based many of her important flights out of Oakland, left on her now famous ill-fated attempt to fly around the world.¹⁷

Automobile access to the airport was a problem, because it was blocked by the San Leandro Bay and its extensive marshlands. The roadway had to go all the way around the marsh. Notice in the postcard image to the right (click on it for a bigger view) that there is a roadway connection from Alameda to the Oakland Airport -- but not along Doolitle Drive as it is today, but along Maitland Drive, all the way through Bay Farm Island and then along the San Francisco Bay.

 Realizing that it did little good to travel quickly by air only to be slowed down by poor transportation, and to compete with San Francisco for valuable air mail contracts,  the Port of Oakland decided to dredge the San Leandro Bay alongside the airport to create a channel, called "Airport Channel", where high speed boats could provide a fast connection from the Oakland Airport to San Francisco. These boats were very successful and ran for a number of years.¹⁸

Today the airport extends well beyond the marsh area and well out into the San Francisco Bay (see postcard picture at right, showing the then current, and proposed new, runways). The "proposed harbor facilities", planned at the site of Arrowhead Marsh, was never built, which is why we still have this small piece of marsh area today (see map at left).

Commercial passenger and cargo jet aircraft operate today from the South Field, which opened in 1962.

Today the Oakland Airport serves more than 10 million passengers a year.

Container Shipping

Container shipping commenced in the Oakland Harbor in 1962. The start of Sea-Land Service's operation was marked by the docking there of the largest container ship at the time, the S.S. Elizabethport.¹⁹ By the late 1960s the Oakland Harbor was the second largest container shipping port in the world. Its success was largely due to its advantage of being a natural harbor within a harbor (the San Leandro Bay within the San Francisco Bay) and the ability, once the ships arrived, to move the containers directly off the ships and onto either rail cars or trucks, to proceed to their final destination. As ships continued to increase in size, in order to accommodate them and compete for their business, dredging to make the harbor deeper, also continued.

"Ecology" and the Environmental Awakening Movement

In the 1960s many people challenged authority and "traditional" (inherited) beliefs which lead to many "rights" movements -- including civil rights, gay rights, the right of the handicapped to better public access without barriers, and the right of nature, called the "environmental awakening" movement. The term "ecology" made popular in the 1960s came from a recognition of man's interconnectivity with nature. The "ecology flag" seen at the left was first published in 1969 and became a popular symbol in the 1970s.

It was in the 1960s that legislative protection for submerged lands in the San Francisco Bay area was finally enacted via the McAteer-Petris "Save the Bay Act" became law on September 17, 1965. It effectively did not allow the filling of any more submerged lands in the San Francisco Bay area. However by this time so much drastic change had already been made to the San Leandro Bay and its surrounding areas that any ability to preserve it as it was in its "first nature" state was far past.

Sensing that new legislation was coming, many major projects were approved ahead of the McAteer-Petris Act, including the massive Oakland Airport expansion of the South Field and the building of the Oakland Coliseum Entertainment Complex, which opened in 1966 and rests on 120 acres of reclaimed marshland.

The temptation to build on large areas of available space in the marsh area surfaced again in 2005. The Koi Nation proposed building a 200,000 square foot casino and hotel complex right next to Arrowhead Marsh, an area still relied upon by thousands of birds for habitat, including the endangered California Clapper Rail.²⁰  Despite the casino's offer to pay the city of Oakland $30 million per year for 20 years in exchange for allowing the project, a strong out cry from the public against it, ultimately stopped the complex from being  built.²¹

Conclusion

Early legislative protections made by the State of California for submerged and semi-submerged areas around the San Francisco Bay were intended, at least in part, to help protect wildlife, which was once extraordinarily abundant in the area. However over the years following its initial protective legislation, the government continually eased restrictions on use of "submerged lands", shifting eventually to allow virtually any use that served a "public good". This opened the way for the development of the area as we know it today, including the (public) Alameda Golf Complex, the (public) Oakland Coliseum, and the (public) Oakland International Airport.

Despite some good intentions to try to regulate the use of the submerged and marshland areas in the San Francisco Bay, ultimately, the temptation of vast land areas available for new large-scale projects proved irresistible to those officials who had stewardship over the land.

The mammoth sized projects built on San Leandro Bay and its marshland, including the Oakland Coliseum Complex, with its massive asphalt parking lots, the Oakland Airport, with its massive parking lots and extensive concrete runways that extend out into what was once the San Francisco Bay, the Nimitz Freeway, and an industrial trucking park, have literally paved over what was once one of the most productive saltwater marshlands in the world.

The same motivating factors that initially led to the transformation of the San Leandro Bay and its surrounding marshland area -- the desire to improve transportation and commerce and the resulting economic gain from accomplishing that, remain motivating factors at work today. A quote from the Port of Oakland website states quite simply, "The Port has gained prominence not only because of its natural advantages, but also because of leadership that has known how to develop and market them to the benefit of the local economy."²²

San Leandro Bay

Sources and Notes:

(1AA) http://gocalifornia.about.com/cs/missioncalifornia/a/josehist.htm
(1A) Alameda Argus Newspaper Alameda County: 6/24/1882.
(1) Merlin, I., Alameda A Geographical History. sixth ed. 1977, Alameda
(2) Richard, Christopher (1993) Guide to East Bay Creeks, Oakland, CA
(3) Overland Monthly Magazine (1883?) as reported by Monteagle, F.J. (1978) Lively Century: San Leandro Bay, Oakland.
Slack, Gordon, Bay Nature Magazine, In the Shadow of Giants: The Redwoods of the Oakland Hills. July-September 2004.
Ibid
(4) Monteagle, F.J. (1978) Lively Century: San Leandro Bay, Oakland
(5) Brinkley, A (1999) The Unfinished Nation, New York
(6) Grinell, Bryant and Stoner (1883) as found in Monteagle, F.J. (1978) Lively Century: San Leandro Bay, Oakland
(7)  Monteagle, F.J. (1978) Lively Century: San Leandro Bay, Oakland
(8) Merlin, I. (1977) Alameda A Geographical History, Alameda
(9) Slack, Gordon, Bay Nature Magazine, In the Shadow of Giants: The Redwoods of the Oakland Hills. July-September 2004.
(10) Ibid
(6B) The Alameda Argus Newspaper The Tidal Canal: 9/02/1882.
(12) The Alameda Encinal Newspaper various stories: 9/20/1882.
(12A) San Francisco Estuary Institute http://www.sfei.org/rmp/rmp_news/vol_4_issue_2_html/Volume_4_Issue_2.html#SLB
(13) Alameda Argus Newspaper various stories: 9/16/1882.
(14) Alameda Argus Newspaper various stories: 9/30/1882.
(15) Scott, M. (1963) The Future of San Francisco Bay, Oakland, CA
(16) Ibid.
(17) Monteagle, F.J. (1978) Lively Century: San Leandro Bay, Oakland
(18) Scott, M. (1963) The Future of San Francisco Bay, Oakland, CA
(19) Port of Oakland. The Port & You. History. May 25, 2007. <http://www.portofoakland.com/portnyou/history.asp>
(20) Jean Quan Website. The Environmental Argument Against the Koi Nation Casino Proposal. 2005. May 25, 2007. <http://www.jeanquan.org/Files/Environmental%20Argument%20Agst%20the%20Casino.htm>
(21) Online Casino News. Koi Nation Gives Up Plan to Build tribal Casino Near Oakland Airport. June 13, 2005. May 25, 2007. <http://www.onlinecasino-news.com/20050613/koi_nation_gives_up_plan_to_build_tribal_casino_near_oakland_cic.aspx>
(22) Port of Oakland. The Port & You. History. May 25, 2007. <http://www.portofoakland.com/portnyou/history.asp>

Author's note: A sincere thanks to professor Paul Groth and the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at UC Berkeley. Gary Lenhart