Oakland

“ Oakland is more to San Francisco, than Brooklyn is to New York. The ocean breezes are so tempered in crossing San Francisco Bay, that a very perceptible change of climate takes place, and Oakland is able to boast of a genial air and a clear sky on many days in summer, when San Francisco is shrouded in fog or swept by heavy, dust-laden winds. ”

“ The air is fresh and salt as if you were at sea. On the one hand is Oakland, gleaming white among its gardens. On the other, to seaward, hill after hill is crowded and crowned with the palaces of San Francisco; its long streets lie in regular bars of darkness, east and west, across the sparkling picture; a forest of masts bristles like bulrushes about its feet; nothing remains of the days of Drake but the faithful trade-wind scattering the smoke, the fogs that will begin to muster about sundown, and the fine bulk of Tamalpais looking down on San Francisco, like Arthur’s seat on Edinburgh. ”

“ It was with a sort of shock, that, after hours of travel, through smiling plain and upland, we found ourselves in the prosaic environment of Oakland.
Our car was run out to the end of a pier, which stretched for miles, it seemed, into the bay. The vast expanse of water about us, the great city away off across the bay, and the frail-looking, but yet perfectly safe, piling on which our car had place, gave a tone of empty loneliness to everything, and we could not but feel gloomy. ”

“ Oakland, the third largest city in California is but eighteen minutes from San Francisco via the Southern Pacific’s fine transbay steamers.
With its fine harbor facilities, Oakland is rapidly growing as a commercial center, carrying on an extensive coastwise and foreign trade. Its position on the east side of the bay, makes it a great railroad terminal for all lines from the north, south and east.
As a community of homes, Oakland has a well deserved fame, for its setting is picturesque and the climate nears perfection. ”

“ We stroll around, first on one side of the train and then on the other, keeping one eye on it for fear it will get away from us and careful not to get too far out of its reach. We can see that Oakland is a large and beautiful city, and learn that it has a population of 60,000 inhabitants; a place where flowers bloom on the lawns, fruits mature in the orchards, vegetables grow in the gardens, and grains are harvested in the fields each and every month in the year. It has mountain scenery back of it and an ocean view in front of it ”

“ Oakland is a large, rapidly growing city, with its fine two-million-dollar Hotel Oakland occupying an entire block. The Municipal Auditorium, seating thirteen thousand people, is near the shores of Lake Merritt, in the City Park. It is a great railway center, the terminus of the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, and Western Pacific lines. From here you take the ferry to San Francisco. ”

“ California is full of ambuscades, not of a hostile sort, but with all embarrassments that attend surprise. In a hasty drive this afternoon, when I thought I was to visit Oakland, I was suddenly drawn up in front of a college and asked to make an address, and in a moment afterward before an asylum for the deaf, dumb, and blind, the character of which I did not know until the carriage stopped in front of it. All this taxes the ingenuity as your kindness moves the heart of one who is making a hurried journey through California. ”

“ And then came the city of Oakland, and on the shelves of that free library I discovered all the great world beyond the skyline. Here were thousands of books as good as my four wonder-books, and some were even better. ”

“ There's the chance to make five people grow where one grows now. Here's the scheme in a nutshell. Why don't more people live in Oakland? No good service with San Francisco, and, besides, Oakland is asleep. It's a whole lot better place to live in than San Francisco. Now, suppose I buy in all the street railways of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, San Leandro, and the rest,—bring them under one head with a competent management? Suppose I cut the time to San Francisco one-half by building a big pier out there almost to Goat Island and establishing a ferry system with modern up-to-date boats? ”

“ Passengers and freight from the East to San Francisco are transferred by ferry from Oakland. A branch of the bay (called Oakland Harbour) divides Oakland from Alameda, and the railway piers of Oakland run directly out into the bay for more than 2 m. toward San Francisco, thus shortening the ferry connexions. Lake Merritt, in the heart of the city, a favourite pleasure resort, is the centre of the city's park system. Oakland is the seat of California College (co-educational, Baptist, opened in 1870) , and of St Mary's College (Roman Catholic, 1863) for men ”

“ Within two years over 100,000 adventurous men came, and many remained to help upbuild San Francisco and California. Across the bay on the eastern shore is Oakland, third city on the coast, with its 175,000 people. It is a city of slopes covered with charming homes, spreading northward to the city of Berkeley, seat of the great University of California and noteworthy for its loveliness. ”

“ I noticed in Oakland a man who drew the whole length of his body along the sidewalk, like an enormous reptile, moving slowly by the help of his hands, unable to get along in any other way, holding up a bright, sunny, sailor face. On his back was a pack of newspapers, from which men helped themselves, and flung him generally a half or a quarter of a dollar, always refusing the change. That such a man could do business in the streets, was a credit to the kindliness of the people incommoded by him. ”

“ Between the two cities they could see the white ferry-boats on the water. Around to their right was Berkeley, and to their left the scattered villages between Oakland and San Leandro. Directly in the foreground was Piedmont, with its desultory dwellings and patches of farming land, and from Piedmont the land rolled down in successive waves upon Oakland.
"Look at it," said Daylight, extending his arm in a sweeping gesture. "A hundred thousand people there, and no reason there shouldn't be half a million. ”

“ The ferry boat fast to its bridge, the locomotive is no longer an impotent thing. We are making the last stage of a long trip across the continent by rail. The little towns are multiplying. The subtle prescience of a great city is upon us. We turn west, then south and the suburban villages are shouldering one another all the more closely the entire way. We skirt and barely miss Berkeley, hesitate at Oakland and then come to a grinding final stop at the end of a pier that juts itself far out beyond the shallow reaches of San Francisco bay. ”

“ Oakland lies seven miles east of San Francisco. At least that is the distance from centre to centre; between the nearest margins the measure would be hardly five miles. A dozen times a day the ferry-boat takes one over; fare, 25 cents. Get out at Broadway street, turn to your left, walk four or five blocks, notice the comfortable, roomy appearance of the city. Two blocks up, observe that neat church on the left, set well back from the street and surrounded by ample grounds and pleasant gardens. ”

“ And the world's full of places like that—everywhere, most likely, except Oakland. Oakland's just a place to start from, I guess. Now that's adventure, I want to tell you. Just think of the luck of them boys! All the same, some day I'm going to go over the Andes to the headwaters of the Amazon, all through the rubber country, an' canoe down the Amazon thousands of miles to its mouth where it's that wide you can't see one bank from the other an' where you can scoop up perfectly fresh water out of the ocean a hundred miles from land. ”

“ Young, who was a native of Massachusetts and just as proud of California as he was of his old home in the east, turned with considerable elation to Berkeley, the University town. "There," said he, "to the north of Oakland is Berkeley, with a population of thirteen thousand. It is, as you see, situated at the foot of the San Pablo hills, and is about eleven miles from the Market street ferry in San Francisco. To reach it you go by ferry to the Oakland pier and then take the cars on the Southern Pacific road." ”

“ A prophet on a bicycle came to Oakland suddenly very hard up a few weeks ago, and began to ride up and down on his two-wheeler, warning the people to flee to the high ground, and thus escape the wrath to come, for, he said, the waters of the great deep would arise at about the middle of the month and smite the people of Oakland and slay them, and float the pork barrels out of their cellars, and fill their cisterns with people who had sneered at his prophecy. ”

“ We arrived at San Francisco towards midnight. At noon on Saturday we took the steamboat for Oakland, which is across the bay from San Francisco. It took its name from the number of oak-trees growing there. They give a green and pleasant appearance to the country round. California College is situated in Oakland.
On Sabbath we had the pleasure in the morning of listening to a sermon from an old friend, and in the evening grandpa told the people of what God had wrought through the missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. ”

“ Well Al we finally got to Oakland which is across part of the ocean from Frisco. We will be back there later on for practice games.
We stayed in Oakland a few hours and then took a train for here. It was another night in a sleeper and believe me I was tired of sleepers before we got here. I have road one night at a time but this was four straight nights. You know Al I am not built right for a sleeping car birth. ”

“ In the Oakland suburbs is Berkeley, where are some of the College buildings of the University of California, founded in 1868 and having twenty-three hundred students, many of them women. The attractive grounds cover two hundred and fifty acres, and the endowments exceed $8,000,000. South of Oakland is the pleasant suburban town of Alameda. On the western shore of the bay, south of San Francisco, is Menlo Park, a favorite place of rural residence for the wealthy San Francisco people, having many handsome villas and estates with noble trees. ”

“ Besides a day in Oakland and Berkeley, where the State University is located, and a short run on a railroad to San Quinten, all my sight-seeing was done in San Francisco. There are over half a million people in and around that city. Probably 350,000 in San Francisco; Oakland Alameda, Berkeley and several other [220] towns across the bay, practically one city, have over one hundred thousand more. ”

“ He was pacing up and down the stone arcade of the Ferry Building, dismally anticipating the prospect of walking the city streets alone with his curse, when it occurred to him that he might possibly make his way to Oakland. Oakland was less strenuous; it was calm, sober, respectable, free from the distressing torments of San Francisco. 158Many a time he had met Mrs. Higgins upon the dock behind the waiting-room, and he knew the way well. He dodged slyly up the wagon-track, round the corner of the baggage-room, to the slip where the steamer Piedmont was waiting to set out on her last trip. ”

“ For many miles we continued skirting the bay, partly crossing it on trestle bridges till we reached Oakland, so called from its beautiful groves of oaks; and which, though separated from San Francisco by the bay, is one of its suburbs. We crossed over from Oakland Ferry, and were at San Francisco, our journey to the Far West—across the continent of America, 4000 miles from ocean to ocean, traversing the ten states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, the territory of Utah Nevada, into California—safely accomplished. ”

“ Many Oakland people were frightened, especially as Wiggins, the great intellectual Sahara of the prophet industry, also prophesied a high wave which would rise at least above the bills at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. With the aid of these two gifted middle-weight prophets, I was enabled to secure some good bargains in corner lots and improved property in Oakland at ten per cent. of the estimated value. In other words, I put my limited powers as a prophet against those of Professor Wiggins, the painstaking and conscientious seer of Canada, and the bicycle prophet of the Pacific slope. ”

“ The other resting-place of which we spoke is at the Glades Hotel in the town of Oakland—the same in which Mr. Willis quenched his poetic thirst. Oakland, looking already old and quaint, though it is a creation of the railroad, sits immediately under the sky in its mountain, in a general dress and equipage of whitewashed wooden houses. A fine stone church, however, of aspiring Gothic, forms a contrast to the whole encampment, and seems to have been quickly caught up out of a wealthy city: it is a monumental tribute by the road-president, Mr. ”

“ The visitors remained at Oakland for several days, as the lady wished to have her son's remains removed to the old homestead in Delaware. She was greatly distressed over the want which she saw at Oakland—for there was literally nothing to eat but black-eyed pease and the boys' chickens. Every incident of the war interested her. She was delighted with their Cousin Belle, and took much interest in her story, which was told by the boys' mother. ”

“ Frisco (San Francisco) lies across the bay—a distance of about eight miles—from Oakland, and there are large steam-ferries continually passing back and forth. We went aboard the ferry; and the trip was so pleasant that we thought we would like to cross the ocean. Several runners came over to Oakland to talk with the passengers as they crossed the bay; but on reaching the Frisco shore, I swear I never saw the like, and it would be impossible to describe the scene. There must have been seventy-five runners there from the different hotels, all anxious to take you to a good house. ”