Machining and woodworking were a fixture of the central district. The principal manufacturing node lay within the original Oakland city grid, which ran from the waterfront to 12th Street with Broadway as the central thoroughfare. The principal axes of Oakland's industrial belt ran along the waterfront and were reinforced by the rail line coming from the east along the estuary all the way to Oakland Point (1869), where it met a second line arriving from the north (1873). But the best was yet to come, and Oakland still looked more like a satellite of San Franisco's diversified manufacturing complex than a realm of its own.(34) By 1890 California Cotton was the largest cloth mill in the West, Josiah Lusk the biggest cannery, Pacific Coast Borax the largest producer of cleanser, and Lowell Manufacturing the biggest carriage works. ![]() Factories became abundant in the 1870s and the 1880s saw another thirty establishments spring up. Oakland industrialized rapidly through the rest of the century. Although the rail terminus was officially San Francisco (trains were ferried across the bay from the 7th Street mole), the railyards were a major employer in West Oakland and an attraction for manufacturers seeking access to California markets. The big turning point was the arrival of the Central Pacific in 1869, after which population climbed from 10,500 to 35,000 in a decade - making Oakland the second city in the western United States for a generation. By 1869, it could count sixteen factories, including sawmills, tanneries, slaughterhouses, dairies, a jute mill, flour mill, drydocks and a brewery (the only thing out of the ordinary was a boot and shoe maker). Oakland began as one of several small towns around the Bay, with the usual smattering of resource industries. The rapid acceleration of East Bay urbanization that went along with this industrial surge would create the greater Bay Area metropolis of the 20th century (Figures 1 and 4).įigure 1: Manufacturing employment and output by county groups, 1860-1940 Alameda and Contra Costa counties together surpassed San Francisco and the West Bay (including San Mateo county) in manufacturing employees and value of output by 1910. The foreward wave of regional growth had shifted by 1900 to Oakland and the greater East Bay. Part one on San Francisco is here.įigure 4: Aerial map of Bay Area, c. ![]() This is part two focused on Oakland and the East Bay. ![]() Originally written for The Manufactured Metropolis, edited by Robert Lewis, Temple University Press.
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