One City Many Intersecting Stories
Bay Street & Present Day Emeryville
Today the most visible center of physical culture and community in our city is Bay Street, a preplanned three block shopping, residential, and entertainment complex that gives the illusion of a traditional small town complete with a main street called Bay Street that is filled with national chain stores such as The Gap, Sephora, and the Apple Store. Systematically spaced moveable kiosks line the sidewalks selling smaller trinkets like cell phone cases and inexpensive sunglasses. At the north end of the mall, above the retail level is a gated parking garage for the residents that call the four floors above it home. These luxury apartments rent for $2215-$4625 a month and offer gourmet kitchens, washer/dryers, a fitness center, business center, swimming pool, and a free shuttle service to the BART station two miles away in Oakland.
At the south end of the complex Bay Street (the street) intersects with Ohlone Way and becomes closed to motor traffic as it loops through larger retail stores ends at Shellmound Street. Here a concrete plaza and neatly trimmed garden of succulents and native grasses gives way to a three story structure swathed with exterior escalators that houses a sixteen screen movie theatre and restaurants that offer everything from Rubio's tacos to Fuddruckers' burgers for visitors to feast upon.
The names Ohlone and Shellmound that hang on brightly blue painted signs are the first indicators to visitors that this land once belonged to the Ohlone Native Americans from approximately 500 B.C. to 1700 A.D.. (See Figure 1) It was here, where the Temescal Creek once flowed into the San Francisco Bay, that the Ohlone people built their winter village. This optimal location was a point for meeting and trading goods among the numerous tribelets that were situated around the bay. The Emeryville Shellmound was the largest of an estimated four hundred shellmounds that dotted the San Francisco Bay, towering sixty feet high and layered with dark soil enriched with shellfish and animal remains yielded by generations of Ohlone meals.
The mound-building culture had gone by the time the Spanish arrived in the 18 th century, however the Emeryville Shellmound remained undisturbed until 1876 when the top of the mound was removed to make way for a dance pavilion that stood at the top of Shellmound Park, an amusement park for Bay Area residents. Excavated twice by the University of California during the twentieth century, The Emeryville Shellmound told the story of the Ohlone people and what life in the Bay Area was like before European influence landed on its shores. The 1902 excavation documented the discovery of tools such as mortars and pestels that the Ohlone used to grind acorns and notched animal bones perhaps used to in net making or weaving. Archeologists also documented human burials found within the top layers of the shellmound. During the second excavation in the 1920s, Archeologists and removed more than six hundred remains that are still stored at the Hearst Anthropology Museum on the Berkeley campus.
In 1997, the clean up of contaminated ground water and soil from a former Sherwin Williams coatings factory that occupied the land after Shellmound Park closed was halted upon the discovery of more Ohlone remains buried deep underground. Completely leveled decades before, this discovery at the site of the former shellmound was a shock to mall developers who had invested in the costly the toxic clean up in order to build Bay Street. The chemicals in run off wastewater from years of industrial production left the formally nutrient rich soil so contaminated with acid, lead, and arsenic that it bubbled an orange and black goo that oozed from the inside of some of the bones uncovered. These bones had a rubbery texture when moved and could not be handled even with gloves. No one knows for sure how many remains were taken to landfills or incinerated at this time. Three hundred bodies were reburied in an unmarked grave at the mall site and it is estimated that hundreds more Ohlone ancestors lie underneath the mall's concrete foundation.
Following public pressure, the city of Emeryville mandated a memorial to the shellmound that once existed. Today a small artist's interpretation of the shellmound located at the corner of Ohlone Way and Shellmound Streets welcomes visitors to the shopping mall. (See Figures 2 and 3) A small mound with a wedge like chunk removed depicts layers of sediment that might have been found in a typical shellmound. At the bottom of the mound are shells. A few large rocks are positioned to create a fountain that flows into a pool lined with stones. Referencing the basket-making tradition of the Ohlone, a large metal basket is visible on the side of the cut-away. Placards outlining a walking tour of the memorial with facts about the Ohlone people and native wildlife available to visitors. The grassy replica mound is inviting to young children searching for places to climb and many of my adolescent students pose with friends for photos at the very top, often not knowing what the mound is a memorial to.
One cannot fault visitors for misunderstanding the memorial; it is completely out of context and misaligned given the usual reasons people visit a shopping mall. My students are very typical American adolescents who enjoy spending hours on the weekends at Bay Street popping in and out of stores, chasing each other up and down the escalators, and watching the latest action movie on the big screen. At Bay Street they feel part of their community, my students mingle among couples walking hand in hand and parents pushing strollers. The thought of the burial ground beneath their feet is the furthest thing from their minds.
Industrial Emeryville and The Ghosts It Left Behind
There are many in Emeryville who feel strongly that Bay Street and the redevelopment that followed it saved Emeryville from desolation and decay and the truth is they are probably right. Before Bay Street the area was filled with ghosts of Emeryville's thriving industrial past. Uninhabited warehouses not only brought environmental contamination to the city, they left entire city blocks void of business, homes, and subsequently people to fill its sidewalks. Empty sidewalks and entire areas of the city without any socialized activity to take place led to an extremely high crime rate given the city's size.
The industry and factories that left an empty Emeryville are the same ones that fueled the city's growth and provided much needed jobs for its residents. In the 1920s all over our nation, cities began reinventing themselves as centers for industrial production in an effort to attract businesses and spawn economic growth. The city of Emeryville was no different. Up until the 1920s Emeryville was primarily an agricultural town. Farms, dairies, stockyards, dotted the city streets. A collection of slaughterhouses and animal by-product factories lined the waterfront. Canneries and even a can factory were processing and packaging Northern California's produce.
The marriage of Emeryville and industry began as well suited couple. Through its location, Emeryville provided unique offerings to companies looking to produce goods and services. A 1929 special edition of the Emeryville Herald, celebrating the city's "Thirty-Third Anniversary" listed over 100 companies that called Emeryville home including Del Monte, Fisher Body, Judson Pacific, Pacific Gas and Electric, Pennzoil, Santa Fe Railroad, Shell Oil, Sherwin-Williams Paints, Standard Electric, Union Oil, Western Electric, and Westinghouse. An artist's illustration on the cover of this special issue depicts the city's prosperous image with a large cargo ship, steam train, factory buildings, and numerous smoke stacks that disappear into the rays of the sun setting over the San Francisco Bay. The smoke stacks too numerous and layered to count were reflective of the city's economic prosperity and investment in its future. These smoke stacks were a symbol of pride.
Just like today, during this time of industrial growth, Emeryville's residential population was a small fraction of its workforce. However then, a majority of the land in Emeryville was dedicated to industrial production. Photographs taken in the factories during this era are full of bandana-clad women wearing coveralls and sporting bright smiling faces. Pride beams from the expressions of those workers. A pride that makes photographs like these look dated, because it's a pride that is difficult for us to understand today. The truth is those prideful smiles come from people who believed they were part of something bigger than themselves and that something bigger was building a great city. That kind of excitement is easy to absorb because deep down all people want to be part of creating something that is great, and something great was growing from the factories of Emeryville.
In between a mixture of factories, stores, bars, and houses at the corner of Park and San Pablo Avenues the Oakland Oaks built their ballpark. As part of the Pacific Coast League, the Oaks were the team to watch in the East Bay long before the A's called the Coliseum in Oakland home. In the 1950's when revenues and attendance dwindled, the Oaks were sold and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Several attempts to recreate the stadium as racing track for cars and motorcycles met with little success.
The greatness of Emeryville's industry grew and grew, until it became too big to sustain. Cheaper wages and production costs overseas, caused many companies to shut down factories and vacate the city they helped build. In the decades that followed, when the pride-filled photographs had begun to yellow and fade, many factory workers were sickened with respiratory and blood related diseases due to ongoing exposure to chemicals in Emeryville factories. With no industry and very little residential population, Emeryville became a place that very few people wanted to spend time in. Boarded up storefronts and abandoned buildings lined the sidewalks that became home to the invisible and most vulnerable members of the community. Like many cities that have experienced an industrial collapse, Emeryville experienced a rise in crime, gang activity, homelessness, a decline in population. A few blocks to the north from Emeryville's boarder in Oakland the situation was much the same. City streets were not safe for children to travel to and from school and once at school, resources were limited. The growing Black Panther movement in the East Bay took note after several young school children, were struck by cars speeding through crosswalks as they traveled to the very building our school is currently housed in. Not willing to wait for a traffic light to be installed, the Black Panthers escorted children across the intersection in the morning and afternoon until a permanent light was installed.
Early Emeryville & Shellmound Park
After the Spanish arrived and before the city's incorporation, the land known today as Emeryville, was a vast cattle land with large slaughtering corrals that covered the grasslands. The land became part of Vincente Peralta's Spanish land grant and his hides-and-tallow trade thrived here until the California Gold Rush changed everything along the west coast for the Californios. The migration of newcomers to the west felt entitled to take up residence wherever they saw fit and Peralta's land was taken over by squatters who appropriated his cattle and farmland. Real estate speculators acquired much of Peralta's land and began selling tracts of the land in 1856. This abrupt takeover and entitlement by the Gold Rush settlers uprooted Peralta, like the Spanish Missionaries had done to the Ohlone before him.
Joseph S. Emery came to west during the Gold Rush and found a lucrative career as a stonecutter that led to over seeing the quarrying of rocks to build some of San Francisco's first buildings in the financial district. With his fortune, he moved to the East Bay in 1859 and purchased 200 acres land that would later become the city of Emeryville for $8,000. Emery continued his business as a stone contractor while developing his land with an entrepreneurial eye on the future as he built up the areas surrounding his land. He built the Telegraph Avenue and San Pablo street car lines and Mountain View Cemetery, where he selected a prime location for his own final resting place. Emery was one of the organizers of the company that built the California and Nevada Rail Road and one of the incorporators of the Oakland Home Insurance Company. Emery saw that the area surrounding his land was prime for development and had the power and financial means to influence its development. Much of the growth along what was then known as the Oakland Harbor grew out of Emery's work. The Harbor was shallow and needed deepening in order for ferry boats to travel to and from the harbor during high tide and maintain scheduled trips for visitors and commuters. Emery saw that maintaining accessible ferry transportation as essential to the city's growth
In Emeryville, the 1870s were a time of great transformation along the shoreline of the Bay. Gold Rush prosperity had built up San Francisco and Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville were right behind it in the East Bay. A rifle range, trotting park, beer garden, band shell, and a shady thicket of trees that drew picnickers all resided beside what remained of the towering Emeryville Shellmound. Emeryville had become a place where Bay Area residents would come to relax and play, so it seemed only natural to complete the experience with a dance pavilion on the very top of the shellmound. The notion of dancing on an Indian burial ground was considered as a thrill that would attract visitors. Although almost 30 years before the University of California would conduct their first excavation, it was either common knowledge or perhaps myth that the Emeryville Shellmound was a resting place for the Ohlone dead. This is how Shellmound Park, an amusement and recreation park was born in 1879.
The 16-acre park was open seasonally from March 1 through November 1. Social clubs and workers unions often held rallies and events at the park that was accessible from the East Bay by trolley and train to Shellmound station. The ferry brought well-dressed San Franciscan's who spent the day attending, orchestra concerts, boxing matches, in addition foot and bicycle races. In the late afternoon the dance pavilion would open its doors, where couples would dance until the moon lit the sky. Excursions to Shellmound Park were an all day event for Bay Area families
In addition to the attraction of Shellmound Park, the Northern Railway put early Emeryville on the map as an industrial intersection, where trains ran along the shoreline from Oakland to California's wheat shipping center in Port Costa on the Carquinez Strait. Inexpensive land and numerous transportation options primed the area for industry. Slaughterhouses lined the path of the railroad to the northern shoreline in an area known as Butchertown. Property along the shoreline also attracted heavy manufacturing. Residents in neighboring regions found the industry in early Emeryville to be unacceptable and noxious and fought to impose change upon the industries that thrived in the area.
In 1896 those who resided on the 200 acres north of Oakland originally purchased by Joseph S. Emery united to protect their assets and began the first steps toward the incorporation of a city of their own by filing a petition with the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. These early landowners drew and redrew the boundaries of the city to exclude the bulk of adjacent residential neighborhoods and to exclude every church in the area. This redistricting is still reflected in the Emeryville of today, with extensive areas dedicated to commercial activity and very little reserved for residential use. Landowners and investors cited frustration with the county board of supervisors and a failure to provide municipal improvements that they felt they were entitled to because of the high taxes they paid. Those who came to the East Bay from San Francisco with pockets full of Gold Rush industry profits felt strongly that the money they were investing should stay in Emeryville. With support from the owners of the racetrack, that paid a bulk of the taxes in town, Emeryville's powerful won their battle and the city of Emeryville was established on November 2, 1896. Not surprisingly many of the vocal residents pushing for incorporation were elected to the Emeryville Board of Supervisors a month after the city was established. Emeryville's elected officials worked to establish a civic infrastructure needed to support the tiny city's growth. They quickly created a school board, with one school that rapidly grew to two, established police and fire departments, built a stately city hall, and set up a structure within the office of the city engineer to oversee further construction and development of the growing city. Some of Emeryville's early leaders, W.H. Christie, J.T. Doyle, and Ralph S. Hawley are still present today in the names of the city streets and municipal buildings. Emeryville residents had gotten what they invested in and fought for a city they could build and develop on their own terms. The city cultivated industries that others shunned, stockyards, gambling, and steel mills all had homes in the city that forced its residents to travel to Oakland on Sundays to worship.
With the dawn of Prohibition, the closure of Shellmound Park seemed eminent. The amusement park closed in 1924. The land was purchased by the C.K. Williams Company and converted into an industrial plant. Emeryville's future growth, as its leaders saw it was no longer in agriculture and food production, so the city reinvented itself as hub for industry on the Pacific Coast. As civic leaders worked to attract business, the city began to diversify and evolve, both ethnically and ethically. During this time the faces, names, and languages that filled Emeryville began to change. African Americans and Chinese Americans joined residents of French, Portuguese, and British descent. Card clubs, saloons, bordellos, and horse racing had thrived in Emeryville after the Gold Rush, however during the years of prohibition theses vice industries flourished under a government and police department that conveniently turned a blind eye to speakeasies and illegal gambling clubs in exchange for financial kickbacks and bribes. County officials tried curtail Emeryville's activities through numerous Prohibition-era raids. Alameda County District Attorney, Earl Warren once referred to Emeryville as "the rottenest city on the Pacific Coast." He later described the city's negligence, "Vice is flourishing in Emeryville under the encouragement of the city and police officials, who are getting their cut," he said. Within a block of the police of Emeryville are 12 houses of prostitution and 20 bootlegging joints." 2 Looking back, Emeryville distinguished itself as a city that wrote its own rules, bent them when it suited them, and faced the consequences.
The Ohlone (Huchiun) Village
The Ohlone Native Americans are often referred to as the first residents of the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas. Within this180 miles of Pacific coastline and surrounding inland areas were 24 known Ohlone tribelets. Each tribelet had its own customs, dialect, and tradable resources. For the most part the Ohlone tribelets lived independently from one another, only meeting from time to time to trade goods or on occasion to intermarry. The Temescal Creek that ran from what is known today as the Oakland Hills to the mouth San Francisco Bay in Emeryville provided an optimal spot for the Huchiun tribelet to establish their winter village and welcome traders from around the Bay. For the Ohlones, trade was an extension of the their value of sharing and not necessarily for the purpose of making a profit. If a tribelet lived along a creek rich with salmon and steelhead, as the Huchiun did, they did not keep it for just themselves, they shared it with others. When visitors from neighboring triblets arrived in the village it was customary that they were welcomed with the gifts that were plentiful within the region of that village. For the Ohlones that lived along the mouth of the Temescal Creek we can imagine that the gifts that were offered for trade were shellfish, salmon, and steelhead. In years when the catch was plentiful the Ohlone would entertain with lavish feasts for their guests and in lean years or in between salmon runs, a salmon-fishing tribelet might visit a neighboring tribelet with the expectation that the entertaining custom would be reciprocated.
The bones and shellfish from the elaborate feasts that could not be carved into tools or shaped into jewelry were discarded into piles similar to our modern day landfills that became known as shellmounds. The Emeryville Shellmound was most likely the waste disposal spot for the Huchiun tribelet and their prime trading spot along the San Francisco Bay is the same location where today we trade money for clothing, home goods, and food at Bay Street.
Our current location for commerce and trade in Emeryville echoes that of the Ohlones, and while much of the landscape has changed there are glimpses of what life was like for the Ohlone people when we look up to the hills that surround Oakland and Berkeley. It was in these hills, during the warm days near the end of spring that the Ohlone women would gather seeds and roots to roast and feed their families. In the summer, the Ohlone would migrate and live up in the hills where the grasses were dry and grapes, currents, and berries that we still see today were plentiful. When the autumn leaves began to fall the Ohlone women would fill their tightly woven baskets with acorns to grind into a powder and boil into the Ohlone staple food; acorn porridge. Today the oak leaves still fall around the East Bay. The acorns that fall beside them now fall upon our city sidewalks. We are reminded of their of their abundance as they crunch under our feet and are ground into a the same type of powder the Ohlone made into porridge. This powder dusts the sidewalks, then the bottoms of our shoes, and ultimately we track it into our homes and onto the floor mats of our cars without considering the nutritional significance it once had to the people who once lived where we live today. The Ohlone had a rich seasonal diet that offered them a variety to harvest without ever planting a seed or plowing a field. The diet that nourished the Ohlone people on is much different than the imported produce and processed foods that fill our grocery stores and pantry shelves, however Berkeley foodies like Alice Waters and Michael Pollan who champion Slow Food, farm to table, and seasonal eating movements often reference the diets of Native Americans as way for us to eat more sustainably and more healthfully.
While we may look to the Ohlone diet as a way to rediscover food practices, there are aspects of or daily lives that vary greatly from the Ohlone people. The Ohlone people valued oneness and a sense of unity. Young children were taught from an early age the customs and behaviors that were expected of them by the adults in the tribe. All members of the tribe were expected to look out for one and other. This meant that if a child's behavior was not as expected, and their parent was not around, another member of the community's stern gaze and watchful eye was an equal substitute. In the Ohlone culture if a man returned from the hunt with a deer, the meat from his kill was shared among the entire village not just his family. The Ohlones did not value individualism, children were not raised to become independent, rather everyone was bound to their families and each family to the tribelet. This oneness was really a sense of belonging not only for how Ohlones cared for one another, it also manifested in their appearance. The Ohlone all dressed in the hides of deer and rabbits, wore adornments of the shells and seedpods that were remnants of the food they harvested, had the same ritual tattoos, and had the same facial features. The features of the Ohlone were not passed on through genetics, rather they were sculpted through a mothers gentle touch as she ritually massaged the pliant bones of her baby's forehead into the desired shape. Knowing that one was part of this culture of oneness was a sense of strength for the Ohlone and to tear these bonds or to seek freedom as we often do within our society, was considered a weakness. The Ohlone people valued the traditional ways and the words of their elders, to improve upon or innovate was never a goal of the Ohlone.
The spiritual world of the Ohlone people, like their beliefs in community was strongly rooted in tradition and not to be challenged or altered. The Ohlone saw spirituality and magic in rituals such as hunting and basket making. Before a man would leave the village to hunt elk or deer, he would fast, abstain from sexual intercourse, and cleanse himself in the sweat-house during the days before his hunt began. Preparing his mind and his body would make his aim agile and guide him throughout his journey. Upon returning to the village with his slain animal, he would return to the sweat-house again to cleanse himself.
The spirit world and the ritual world were inextricably intertwined in the life and death of the Ohlone people. Ohlone traditions around death and the dead shaped some of what we know and do not know about them. The Ohlone did not speak of their dead, for the spirit around the dead was very powerful and should not be mentioned. For this reason, when Spanish missionaries asked the Ohlone about their history, where they came from, they were silent. By not discussing the dead, the Ohlone did not know the history of their people; this puzzled the missionaries.
For a culture that emphasized such strong ties to community, the death of one of its own was an immense loss and one that was followed with great attention to detail so as not to disturb the soul of the departed and challenge the power of the spirit. We can tell a great deal about the Ohlone burial and mourning rituals by looking back to the Emeryville Shellmound and what was found within the ground beneath it. During the early excavation of the shellmound at the beginning of the last century, partially charred bones were discovered, suggesting that the Ohlone practiced a form of cremation. During the early excavation in the one in late 1990's some bodies were methodically positioned with legs bent up near the torso, with arms wrapped around the head. In preparation for burial, the body was positioned as knees tucked beneath the chin and arms bent a placed beside the cheeks. The body was tied into this position and wrapped with blankets and skins before it was placed on the funeral pyre. The deceased's belongings were destroyed and burned beside the body. After the cremation and burial those who prepared the body practiced ritual cleansing, fasting, and chanting. During this time the spouse of the deceased singed their hair, scratched their face and chest, and put ashes on their body so that the ghost of the dead would not recognize them. Relatives in mourning often left the village to live in solitary. It was believed that a widowed spouse was in danger from the ghost of the dead and most people wanted to avoid contact with a person who was so vulnerable.
When the Spanish missionaries arrived in the late 1700s the Ohlone were amazed and confused to see people who looked nothing like them and spoke a language they did not understand. At first the Ohlones feared that the Spanish were spiritually a threat and initially ran and threw themselves on the ground when they first met the missionaries. The Ohlone should have listened to their first instincts, but that was not their way. Instead they welcome the Spanish missionaries who were curious about their way of life into their villages and shared they world with them. The Spanish interest in the Ohlone way of life is well documented in letters and journals and some of what we have learned about he Ohlone has come from their documentation. However the missionaries and their vision of a Catholic utopia in California meant the end of Ohlone life as they knew it. Soon missions were established and the Ohlones were transformed from hunters and gatherers to farmers and harvesters. Instead of the skins of deer and rabbits, women wove threads into cloth and transformed the cloth into the more modest clothing that the missionaries approved of. The Ohlones were forced into baptisms, often the missionaries would baptize a child hoping to lure in the parents to the mission. Ohlone men and women were frequently separated to promote a less promiscuous way of life, that coupled with a desire not to raise Ohlone children in the church led to low Ohlone birthrates. A thousand Ohlone might have lived within the walls of a mission like Mission Delores in San Francisco. The crowded conditions, lacking fresh air, became a breading ground for European diseases such as measles, smallpox, and influenza. Diseases the Ohlones had no immunity from. These diseases decimated the Ohlone population.
By the mid 1800s, the remaining Ohlone of the Bay Area gathered together in small villages. No longer the vast people of 24 tribelets, they picked up what pieces they could of their traditional practices and began to live their lives again. The growth of the Bay Area during this time and the absence of protected reservation status could not prevent the modern world from swallowing up what remained of the traditional Ohlone culture.
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