1903 Woodward and Watson Map of Oakland, California and Nearby Cities

This is a 1903 Woodward, Watson, and Co. real estate map of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, and nearby cities in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. It demonstrates the rapid growth of the East Bay at the turn of the 20th century, a development that would be turbocharged several years later following the devastating 1906 earthquake.

A Closer Look

Coverage extends from Cerrito Creek (in today's eponymous El Cerrito) in the north to the San Landro Bay and what was then the eastern edge of Oakland (Fitchburg, Arroyo Viejo, and Eastmont). Property for sale under the management of Woodward, Watson, and Co. is shaded red, while properties already sold by the company are shaded blue. Blocks are numbered, while old tracts and homesteads are noted even where they had long been supplanted by urban development.

Regardless of coloration, the owners of larger lots are noted throughout, while elsewhere existing and planned tracts and developments are named. The property owners include the leading families of Oakland and the East Bay at the turn of the 20th century, such as William J. Dingee (1854 - 1941), who accrued extensive real estate holdings, set up a real estate agency, and established the Oakland Water Company. In fact, Woodward, Watson, and Co. was the successor to Dingee's real estate empire, formed by the merger of Dingee's company with Frank J. Wodoward's real estate firm in 1899.

Other grandees include the estates or heirs of Joseph Green Eastland (1831 - 1895), president of the Oakland Gas Light Company, Samuel Merritt (1822 - 1890), namesake for the lake, and Edson Adams, considered one of the three founders of Oakland along with the city's infamous first mayor Horace Carpentier (1824 - 1918) and Andrew Moon (1800 - 1880). The earliest among their many money-making schemes, Adams, Carpentier, and Moon leased land from Vicente Peralta (1812 - 1871), inheritor of the large Rancho San Antonio, which covered the entire area, and illegally subleased it to others, using the profits to acquire more land, and so on. Also present on the map is J. B. (John Braddock) Watson, real estate operator (likely the Watson in the title of the firm that prepared this map) and right-hand man of Carpentier, who, with Watson's help, maneuvered to have the city award him its entire waterfront, highly lucrative property. Other lands not managed by Woodward and Watson include those belonging to well-known East Bay families such as Chabot and Shattuck, and wealthy families from elsewhere in the Bay Area (Sutro, Phelan), as well as additional utility companies.

The University of California Berkeley ('State University') is noticeable towards the top-left, and additional educational institutions (Mills College, the College of the Sacred Heart) are also labeled. Additionally, roads, railways, streetcar lines, piers, bridges, and other features are detailed. The San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose Railway recorded here was the predecessor to the Key System, the earliest electric streetcar network in the East Bay, known for its 'mole' (pier') and terminal jutting out into the Bay, allowing for a quick connection to San Francisco (a decade later, the Southern Pacific would begin electrifying many of its lines, providing the region with two competing streetcar systems). The racetrack ('trotting park') at center-left and an amusement park at neighboring Shell Mound Park was the entertainment center of the East Bay, hosting a range of shooting ranges, bars, dancehalls, and other venues, as well as occasional events like circuses.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by Woodward, Watson, and Co. in 1903, drawing on official surveys and records of others, noted at bottom-left. This is the earliest of several editions of a real estate map of the same area produced by Woodward, Watson, and Co., continuing until 1912. All of these are quite scarce now, with the present edition appearing only in the collections of the California Historical Society, the Oakland Public Library, and the University of California Berkeley.