Emeryville: East Bay Recreation Zone
Twenty-five years before there was Emeryville, there was only a simple horse race track at Emery’s station and a rustic amusement park at the old Indian shellmound to draw visitors out to the western marshes of the East Bay. An engraved illustration of the Emery mansion around 1876 shows those two monuments to leisure time looming in the empty landscape behind the founder’s ornate homestead. Between them, the picture shows a steam train of the Northern Railway, which by 1878 linked the San Francisco ferryboats to Martinez and Berkeley. This new line, developed by Central Pacific (under a different corporate name and under pressure from interests in Berkeley), incidentally stopped in Emeryville to deliver horse race fans to the track and picnickers to Shellmound Park.
The Northern line didn’t contribute much to the residential development of Emeryville, unlike some areas of the East Bay, where symbiotic partnerships of transportation and real estate promoters built attractions to lure prospective residents out to distant suburbs. Presumably the types of people who came here for recreation weren’t looking for a place to settle down, and in any case the area lacked the natural charm that drew people to relocate in “the country.”
Evidently though, it was a great place for stockyards and steel mills, because the main impact of rail transportation on Emeryville’s development was the expansion of industry served by the Southern Pacific. The Northern, while shortening the route to Berkeley, brought increasing numbers of day-trippers over from the San Francisco ferry and thus contributed to the commercial development of the districts adjoining the racetrack.
The area boomed towards the tum of the century and this prosperity contributed to the need (and the means) for the town’s incorporation in 1896, albeit without the participation of many nearby residents, who were morally offended that the local economy leaned so heavily on tourism and gambling.
The Trotting Park had been built a few years before the 158 trains came-a relatively small operation served by local horsecar lines and the Oakland/S.F. ferry. At the start, the track was a rural attraction in a semi-rural area that was rebuilt and expanded to serve the crowds brought in by the swift new trains.
Shellmound Park was developed some years later, the railroad having secured the park’s easy access by regional crowds of up to 20,000. Most importantly for our account, Capt. Siebe’s playland by the bay served local needs for recreation and a provided a place for organized gatherings.
Shellmound Park could only exist in a place and time when family recreation was more formal and slower paced than today’s. Emeryville’s pioneering entertainment complex grew out of a San Francisco tradition of East Bay summer homes and local needs for social centers. While it was important to locals, for whom hitching up a wagon and riding for an hour or so was accepted as reasonable effort for a day’s entertainment, it was intended to draw customers from San Francisco. For these pleasure seekers, the traveling, including a ferry ride, was part of the party.
While the trains didn’t create these attractions, it helped both them and the surrounding area to grow. We might surmise that Edward Wiard, the park’s developer had some prior knowledge of the railroad’s future path, but whether it was inside or public knowledge remains unresearched. In any event, J.S. Emery was a railroad man, and the historical record suggests that he and the local entrepreneurs associated with him were sharp players who foresaw major opportunities to improve their holdings and acted upon them.
In regard to E. Wiard, it didn’t take a steam engineer (which he was) to think of buying land in the future path of a railroad; but it probably took some inside business connections to unite with the group of sporting gents who had joined J.S. Emery in snapping up bay front chunks of the newly available Peralta Rancho.
The titles to Spanish land-grant properties had been challenged after the Gold Rush, and the Ranchos were being broken up under the pressure of squatters, commercial interests, and the need to pay legal costs. Don Vicente Peralta sold his portion of the giant Rancho San Antonio while they still had something to sell. Land speculators were churning the deeds until they were acquired by high-rolling gold rush capitalists like Josep Emery – men of vision who were ready to settle and develop the desolate outlands – men who, having settled and developed, were ready to bet on a card game or a horse race.
Emery himself seems to have had a prescient understanding of how cities grow. He had the foresight to establish the California-Nevada Railroad; he founded Mountain View Cemetery. a volunteer fire department, and the Emery grammar school. He also dredged the entrance to Oakland’s harbor-which brought rail service to the city and opened the East Bay to the transcontinental railroad. His horsecar line was the first public transportation to bring people from downtown Oakland to the so-called Oakland Trotting Park and its commercial district. That the town surrounding the track ended up using his name is a fitting tribute to Joseph Stickney Emery’s vision and energy.
The Oakland Trotting Park was an important institution before the prospect of the railroad. The racetrack was more significant than modern sensibilities can appreciate, since it was founded in a time when American society ran on horse-power and people had daily. familiar contact with horses. It was an equine culture where everyday people worked and played with horses; and the wealthy studied, collected, and bred them. Racetracks were the ultimate proving ground for breeding and training and the grand meeting places for experts in the era’s main mode of transportation.
In the late 19th century, people related to horses and took pride in their horse-knowledge, the way many modem Americans do with their cars. Trotting races involved horses pulling vehicles not too different from the ones that brought the spectators. and their appeal was similar to that generated by stock car races in the early days of auto transport. In Victorian times, the Sport of Kings wasn’t just an exotic excuse for gambling, but a spectacle closely related to real life issues. Enthusiasts of 159 the sport knew the horses personally and admired them as the superstar athletes of the time. ridden by jockeys who were celebrities. The drama of their competition fired up discussion and opinion among the fans. who were willing to back their opinions with wagers-which suggested a convenient way to finance the whole enterprise. But that’s another story.
This story originally published in 1996 for the Emeryville Centennial Celebration and compiled into the ‘Early Emeryville Remembered’ historical essays book.
