Alameda Point Before the Navy Arrived

Modern-day Alameda Point traces its roots to an air station that closed in 1997. The federal government commissioned the Alameda Naval Air Station on November 1, 1940. The Navy had rolled up its sleeves two years earlier and begun assembling the base from pieces of a puzzle that included two airports, a pair of railroads, a borax plant, and an oil company. Most of the property the Navy had to deal with, however, lay beneath the waters of San Francisco Bay .

Part 1 of this story will address what was there when the Navy started building its air station. Next week, the Post will look at how the Navy rolled up its sleeves in 1938 and transformed all of this into Alameda Naval Air Station.

In the 19th century, the bay shore lay along Main Street just inside the fence that defined the borders of the air station. Main Street recalls Charles Main. He and Ezra Winchester owned the property along much of the shoreline, which maps often note as the “Main-Winchester Tract.” The pair opened a successful saddlery business in San Francisco in 1850. I often wonder whether the partners purchased this West End property with some of the money from a 1860 deal they struck with the federal government to supply the Pony Express with tack that included saddles and pommel bags.

In August 1864, A. A. Cohen’s San Francisco & Alameda Railroad settled on this property as the perfect spot to build its wharf and pier. At first, the trains ran from a station on today’s Pacific Avenue and Main Street through Alameda and along Alameda Avenue in Oakland to an end-station behind the Go! Gas & Food on Coliseum Way and High Street.

Cohen later ran trains south, first to San Leandro and then on to a town known as “Haywards.” On September 6, 1869, the first transcontinental railroad train to reach San Francisco Bay chugged into the wharf at a spot near where the USS Hornet berths today.

Join the Alameda Post for a two-part walk around Alameda Point, the former Naval Air Station. The Navy dredged San Francisco Bay and used what its machines drew from the Bay floor to create its air station. Dennis Evanosky will discuss how the Navy covered two existing airports and closed a third one nearby. Along the way, he will show you how Alameda Point evolved from where Jimmy Doolittle’s Raiders left for Japan, where aircraft carriers docked, and seaplanes took to the air. We’ll also check out several buildings once used by the Navy and see how they fit into today’s Alameda Point. Tickets for each are $20 and sell out quickly, so get yours now to ensure your place on the tour.

Part 1: North of Tower Avenue Tours – Saturday, July 13 , and Sunday, July 28 , meeting at 10 a.m. at the Main Street entrance, on Navy Way by the plane on a stick.

Part 2: South of Tower Avenue Tours – Sunday, July 14 , and Saturday, July 20 , meeting at 10 a.m. at Seaplane Lagoon Ferry Terminal.

Read Dennis’ previous articles about Alameda Point: War and Peace at NAS Alameda and There’s More than Meets the Eye at Alameda Point .

In 1878, a second train made its first run along this property to a pier near the spot where Bay Ship and Yacht makes it home today. The South Pacific Coast Railroad’s locomotives had no turntable here and had to run the train in reverse through Alameda with a “headlight” on the locomotive’s tender lighting the way. The railroad resolved this issue in 1884 by building a new pier along a seawall that the Corps of Engineers had extended out to San Francisco Bay. A 1902 fire destroyed that pier, so the Southern Pacific Railroad, which had owned the South Pacific Coast since 1885, rebuilt it.

The 1906 earthquake damaged or destroyed the South Pacific Coast’s trestles and tunnels. The line carried passengers and freight to Santa Cruz and points in between over trestles as it made its way over marshland and through tunnels in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The Southern Pacific Railroad stepped up and created the electric line that carried the Big Reds. These trains ran out to the 1902 pier until 1936, when they started using the Bay Bridge.  Five years later, the Navy dismantled the pier to create space for its runways.

We have a record of Charles Main selling property to the Pacific Coast Oil Company in 1879. This company set up shop refining kerosene and shipping their products using “Cohen’s Wharf.” The railroad had stopped using this wharf in 1872 when it began running its trains into Oakland using rails it had laid on today’s Wilma Chan Way. Standard Oil acquired this company in 1901, and moved its operations to Richmond the following year.

By 1912, the federal government had stepped in and broken Standard Oil’s monopoly on the oil business. Standard Oil of California emerged from this breakup. Years later, in 1984, the company changed its name to Chevron. Chevron has agreed to work with the City of Alameda to clean up what remains of Standard Oil’s 1879 company.

It’s difficult for Chevron to avoid responsibility. The company tells everyone that its birthday is September 10, 1879, the day Pacific Coast Oil opened its doors at Alameda Point. Read Richard Bangert’s coverage of this story in the Alameda Post .

In 1881, the Royal Soap Company was operating along the bay shore at Alameda Point. Its building is on Alameda’s city seal. William Tell Coleman took over the building and began processing borax. He sold his business to Francis Marion “Borax” Smith, famed for his role in creating the East Bay’s Key System. Smith wanted to compete with the Southern Pacific Railroad for carrying passengers on rail and water. The money he raked in from his borax business allowed him to do that. He replaced the Royal Soap building with a structure made of concrete, which stood along the shoreline not far from where Main Street meets the East Gate to Alameda Point.

In 1921, the Navy announced its plan to open a base at Alameda Point. Real estate mania struck the Island City. This craze was especially evident on Bay Farm Island, when a group of investors purchased the marshland north of Mecartney Road and announced it would transform the wetlands into “Alameda Acres.” The stakeholders ordered up seven dismantled World War I destroyers to act as breakwater for its project. But the Navy changed its mind. Those wetlands (and the destroyers) sat there until Utah Construction showed up more than 40 years later.

Four years after the Navy broke its promise, the Alameda Airport opened on a strip of made land near the Big Red depot out on the Point. The news that the Navy was not coming was sweetened by the news that the Army Air Corps was interested in opening an airport nearby. The City was delighted and gave over some made land that the Army christened as Benton Field.

With Benton Field in business and Alameda Airport thriving, The University of California decided to build an airport where the College of Alameda and Bayport stand today. What was the University of California doing in the airport business? According to historian K. O. Eckland, the regents saw an opportunity to “capitalize on the airplane fever created by Charles Lindbergh’s transcontinental flight.” To do so, they decided to build the San Francisco Bay Airdrome.

Eckland tells us that the regents ordered the marsh drained and crushed oyster shells barged in to pave two runways—one 3,400 feet long, the second exactly half that length. They also had a 53,000-square-foot hangar built. The airport thrived for 11 years until the Navy decided that the airdrome’s traffic interfered with operations at its newly minted air station

The Navy first condemned 70 acres bordering Atlantic Avenue for a housing project, which later morphed into the Bayport housing development. It then ordered the abandonment of what Eckland called “America’s first downtown airport.”

He wrote, “Without so little as a deserved fanfare, the airdrome quietly slid off the map and into memory of those who made it live.  Another field of dreams was gone.”

Once the Navy had its way with all these structures—and all this history—it built a much-needed bastion to face the threat created when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. In Part 2 of this story, the Post will describe how the Navy accomplished that.

Dennis Evanosky is the award-winning Historian of the Alameda Post . Reach him at dennis@alamedapost.com . His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Dennis-Evanosky .

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