Welcome To Oakland SAFeDATA

Oakland (IPA: /`o?kl?nd/), founded in 1852, is the eighth-largest city in the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Alameda County. Oakland is located in Northern California in the San Francisco Bay Area, the sixth-most-thickly settled metropolitan area in the US. Based on 2006 statistical data, Oakland is the 44th-largest city in the US.

Oakland is a major West Coast port, and is home to several major corporations including Kaiser Permanente and Clorox, as well as corporate headquarters for national retailers like Dreyer`s and Cost Plus World Markets.

The earliest recorded inhabitants were the Huchiun tribe, belonging to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone (a Miwok word meaning "western people"). In Oakland, they were heavily concentrated around Lake Merritt and Temescal Creek, a stream which enters the San Francisco Bay at Emeryville.

Oakland, along with the rest of California, was claimed for the Spanish king by explorers from New Spain in 1772. In the early 19th century, the area which later became Oakland (along with most of the East Bay), was granted to Luís María Peralta by the Spanish royal government for his Rancho San Antonio. The grant was confirmed by the successor Mexican republic upon its independence from Spain. The area of the ranch that is today occupied by the downtown and extending over into the adjacent part of Alameda (originally not an island, but a peninsula), included a woodland of oak trees. This area was called encinal by the Peraltas, a Spanish word which means "oak grove", the origin of the later city`s name. Upon his death in 1842, Peralta divided his land among his four sons. Most of Oakland fell inside the shares given to Antonio Maria and Vicente. They would open the land to settlement by US settlers, loggers, European whalers, and fur-traders.

The town and its environs rapidly grew with the railroads, becoming a major rail terminus in the late 1860s and 1870s. In 1868, the Central Pacific constructed the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point, the site of today`s Port of Oakland. The Long Wharf served as both the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad as well as the local commuter trains of the Central (later, Southern) Pacific. The Central Pacific also established one of its largest rail yards and servicing facilities in West Oakland which continued to be a major local employer under the Southern Pacific well into the twentieth century. The principal depot of the Southern Pacific in Oakland was the 16th Street Station located at 16th and Wood which is currently (2006–7) being partially restored as part of a redevelopment project.

A number of horsecar and cable car lines were constructed in Oakland in the latter half of the 1800s. 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 N Oakland called Idora Park.