Oakland, Oakland

Looking for Oakland, California?

Based on United States Census Bureau estimates for 2008, Oakland is the 44th-largest city in the United States with a population of 420,183.

The Peraltas called the area encinal , a Spanish word that means "oak grove". Upon his death in 1842, Peralta divided his land among his four sons. Most of Oakland fell within the shares given to Antonio Maria and Vicente, who opened the land to American settlers, loggers, European whalers, and fur-traders.

The California state legislature incorporated the town of Oakland on May 4, 1852. In 1853, John Coffee "Jack" Hays, a famous Texas Ranger, was one of the first to establish residence in Oakland while performing his duties as sheriff of San Francisco Jack Hays Texas Ranger Hays.

The first electric streetcar set out from Oakland to Berkeley in 1891, and other lines were converted and added over the course of the 1890s. The various streetcar companies operating in Oakland were acquired by Francis "Borax" Smith and consolidated into what eventually became known as the Key System, the predecessor of today's publicly owned AC Transit. In addition to its system of streetcars in the East Bay, the Key System also operated commuter trains to its own pier and ferry boats to San Francisco, in competition with the Southern Pacific. Upon completion of the Bay Bridge, both companies ran their commuter trains on the south side of the lower deck direct to San Francisco. The Key System in its earliest years was actually in part a real estate venture, with the transit part serving to help open up new tracts for buyers. The Key's investors (incorporated as the "Realty Syndicate") also established two large hotels in Oakland, one of which survives as the Claremont Resort. The other, which burned down in the early 1930s, was the Key Route Inn, located at what is now West Grand and Broadway. From 1904 to 1929, the Realty Syndicate also operated a major amusement park in north Oakland called Idora Park.

The Auditorium would briefly serve as emergency ward and quarantine for some of Oakland's Spanish flu victims in 1918 and 1919. The three waves of that pandemic killed more than 1,400 Oaklanders (out of 216,000 residents).

Prentice, Helaine Kaplan, Rehab Right , Ten-Speed Press. ISBN 0-89815-172-4 Many of the apartment buildings and single-family houses still standing in Oakland were built in the 1920s. Many large office buildings downtown were built in the 1920s, and reflect the architectural styles of the time.

Among these were the Kaiser Shipyards in nearby Richmond whose medical system for shipyard workers became the basis for the giant Kaiser Permanente HMO, which has a large medical center at MacArthur and Broadway, the first to be established by Kaiser. Oakland's Moore Dry Dock Company expanded its shipbuilding capabilities and built over 100 ships.

Sited at both a major rail terminus and an important sea port, Oakland was a natural location for food processing plants whose preserved products fed domestic, foreign and military consumers. The largest canneries were in the Fruitvale district and included the Josiah Lusk Canning Company, the Oakland Preserving Company (which started the Del Monte brand), and the California Packing Company.

Kaiser to work in his shipyards. These immigrants from the Jim Crow South brought their racial attitudes with them, and the racial harmony that Oakland blacks had been accustomed to prior to the war evaporated.

The Oakland location closed in 1972 when it moved operations to the Emeryville Marina.

By the 1980s, it was the most feared and respected of all Hells Angels chapters. Its Oakland Clubhouse still sits on Foothill Boulevard.

The double-decker portion of the Cypress Viaduct freeway (Interstate 880) structure, located in Oakland, collapsed, killing 42. The eastern span of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge also sustained damage and was closed to traffic for one month. Throughout the 1990s, buildings throughout Oakland were retrofitted to better withstand earthquakes.

The Diocese proposed situating a Grand Cathedral, rising 15 stories, directly in front of the Kaiser Convention Center and surrounding it with a "grand plaza," which would have extended all the way to the edge of the lake. Coalition of Advocates for Lake Merritt (CALM), an Oakland group, proposed an alternative plan involving a remake of the 12th Street Dam, halving the number of traffic lanes.

Several days after the shooting, on the night of January 7, 2009, rioters smashed windows in commercial districts and burned several cars in Oakland's Central Business District.

Lake Merritt has only recently become a "lake", where it once was a productive estuary linked to the Bay. Oakland is home to many rare and endangered species including the Presidio Clarkia, Pallid Manzanita, Tiburon Buckwheat, Oakland Star-Tulip, Most-Beautiful Jewel Flower, Western Leatherwood, and the Alameda Whipsnake. Many rare species are localized to serpentine soils and bedrock.

The council has eight council members representing seven districts in Oakland with one member elected at-large; council members serve staggered 4-year terms. The mayor appoints a city administrator, subject to the confirmation by the City Council, who is the chief administrative officer of the city. Other city officers include: city attorney (elected), city auditor (elected), and city clerk (appointed by city administrator).

The mayoral election was a contentious one between Dellums and other candidates, including Oakland City Council president Ignacio De La Fuente and Councilmember Nancy Nadel.

Oakland City Hall was evacuated after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake until US$80M seismic retrofit and hazard abatement work was complete in 1995.

Oakland has more than 50 distinct neighborhoods across land running from the San Francisco Bay up into the East Bay hills, many of which are not "official" enough to be named on a map. Troutman, Keri Hayes.

East Oakland actually encompasses more than half of Oakland's area, stretching from Lakeshore Drive on the east shore of Lake Merritt southeast to San Leandro. North Oakland encompasses the neighborhoods between downtown and Berkeley and Emeryville. West Oakland is the area between downtown and the Bay, partially surrounded by the Oakland Point, and encompassing the Port of Oakland.

The flatlands are the working-class neighborhoods located relatively closer to San Francisco Bay, and the hills are the upper-class neighborhoods along the northeast side of the city. This hills/flats division is not only a characteristic of the City of Oakland, but extends beyond Oakland's borders into neighboring cities in the East Bay's urban core. Downtown and West Oakland are located entirely in the flatlands, while North and East Oakland incorporate lower hills and flatlands neighborhoods.

The region's Fox affiliate, KTVU, is based in (and licensed to) Oakland at Jack London Square along with independent station KICU-TV (licensed to San Jose). In addition, the city is served by various AM and FM radio stations as well; AM stations KMKY, KNEW and KQKE are licensed to Oakland.

The Oakland Unified School District (2006-2007) includes 59 elementary schools, 23 middle schools, 19 high schools, with 9 alternative education schools and programs, 4 adult education schools and early childhood education centers at most of the elementary schools OUSD Schools & Principals 2006-2007) . Accessed August 31 2007.

Oakland Tech has various academies, including its much renown Engineering Academy, which sent more girls to MIT in 2007 than any other public school west of the Mississippi.

Notables include the secular The College Preparatory School and Head-Royce School, both with tuitions around $25,000 per year and the Catholic Bishop O'Dowd High School, Holy Names High School and St. Elizabeth High School. Catholic schools in Oakland are operated by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland also include 8 K-8 schools (plus 1 in Piedmont on the Oakland city border).

Peralta Hospital earlier had merged with Samuel Merritt Hospital. Oakland Hospital in the Fruitvale district closed in the 1990s. Naval Hospital Oakland (Oak Knoll Naval Hospital) closed during the military Base Realignment and Closure of 1993.

The east span of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge also suffered damage from the quake when a 50-foot (15 m) section of the upper deck collapsed onto the lower deck; the damaged section was repaired one month after the earthquake. As a result of the earthquake, a significant seismic retrofit was performed on the western span of the Bay Bridge, and the eastern span is scheduled for replacement, with the new span projected to be completed in 2014.

Between 2005 and 2007 Oakland streets were ranked poorly in the results of an Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) study released on January 5, 2009.

The system has headquarters in Oakland, with major transfer hubs at MacArthur and Oakland City Center/12th Street stations. BART's headquarters was located in a building above the Lake Merritt Station until 2006, when it relocated to the Kaiser Center due to seismic safety concerns.

Besides the transcontinental line of the Southern Pacific, there was also the Santa Fe (whose Oakland terminal was actually in Emeryville), the Western Pacific Railroad (who built a pier adjacent to the SP's), and the Sacramento Northern Railroad (eventually absorbed by the Western Pacific which in turn was absorbed by UP in 1983).

It was one of the earliest seaports to switch to containerization and to intermodal container transfer, Initial Study: Intermodal Interface Demonstration Project, Port of Oakland, Oakland, California , Earth Metrics and Korve Engineerning, December 20, 1989 thereby displacing the Port of San Francisco which never modernized its waterfront. One of the earlier limitations to growth was the inability to transfer containers to rail lines, all crane historically operating between ocean vessel and trucks. In the 1980s the Port of Oakland began the evaluation of development of an intermodal container transfer capability, i.e. facilities that now allow trans-loading of containers from vessels to either trucks or rail modes.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson mentions crime in Oakland as an example of a rising problem of "black-on-black" crime, which Oakland shares with other major cities in the US.

Way. The sculpture consists of eight-foot-tall letters spelling "HERE" and "THERE" in front of the BART tracks as they descend from their elevated section in Oakland to the subway through Berkeley.

Source: Wikipedia > Oakland, California