Oakland

Oakland is a port city in Northern California, on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay across from San Francisco. The city was named after the groves of coast live oak that once covered the plain between the bay and the hills.

The land belonged to the Rancho San Antonio of Luís María Peralta under Spanish and Mexican rule. Horace Carpentier and his partners laid out a town on the shore in the 1850s, and it received its city charter in 1854. The First Transcontinental Railroad reached its western end at Oakland in 1869, and ferries carried passengers on to San Francisco. Shipyards and canneries grew along the estuary in the early 20th century, and the Bay Bridge linked the two cities in the 1930s.

Lake Merritt, a tidal lagoon in the center of the city, became the first official wildlife refuge in the United States in the 19th century. The Paramount Theatre, an Art Deco movie palace from the 1930s, has a gold mosaic front and a hall with a sculpted ceiling. Jack London Square, on the waterfront, is named after the writer, who grew up in Oakland and sailed on the bay. The Oakland Museum of California shows the art, history and nature of the state under its terraced roof gardens.

The Port of Oakland was among the first on the West Coast to build terminals for container ships, in the 1960s, and handles exports of farm produce from the Central Valley. Clorox, the maker of bleach and cleaning products, has its headquarters downtown. Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream began in an Oakland shop, where its founders created the Rocky Road flavor.