
Regions followed
About me:
II grew up in the Montclair District of Oakland, CA. I attended Thornhill Elementary School, Montera Junior High School, and Skyline High School and spent some time at Merritt College.
I lived in Montclair until I was a young adult, and since then, I have lived by Lake Merritt, in the Fruitvale District, on Piedmont Ave, in the King Estates Area, and now in the Laurel District.
Since going on an Oakland Heritage Alliance Tour of the Fernwood Neighborhood in the Montclair District of Oakland in about 1984, I have been an Oakland history buff ever since. On that tour, I learned a train (Sacramento Northern) ran through Montclair in the early 1900s and that people lived in the area as early as the 1860s. This sparked my interest, and I've been hooked ever since. I remember spending countless hours, poring over old newspapers and documents, trying to piece together the history of our neighborhood. Since then, I have spent a lot of time looking into Montclair's history and learned a lot.
In 2018, I started this blog because I had collected so much information on Oakland's history and couldn't wait to share it. I found that posting in Facebook groups, while a great way to connect with others, wasn't the best outlet for me to share my in-depth knowledge and research on Oakland's history. The platform's format often led to my posts getting lost in the feed, and it was challenging to maintain a cohesive narrative. I love sharing what I know and reading what others share, but I felt that a blog would allow me to present my information in a more organized and accessible way.
With the help from my dear friend Phil, I was off and running. It should be easy, I say to myself, because I had already laid out actual pages and everything I wanted to say.
But it wasn't.
I get bogged down in the details. I worry about getting my facts correct. Finding a happy medium between too much and too little is hard for me. So, this is a work in progress, so bear with me.
Please check out my blog A Bit of History - Oakland Unfolded
Interests
My area of interest is the history of the Montclair District. There is more to learn. I have also spent a lot of time researching real estate developments, subdivisions, and tracts.
I love looking at old maps of Oakland.
I have created a database of photos taken by Eston A. Cheney, a treasure trove of early 20th-century real estate photographs. In the 1910s and 1920s, many developers hired Cheney to photograph new residential tracts and commercial buildings in the rapidly growing East Bay.
I hoped to figure out his numbering system when creating this database. Most of his photos only have a number on them. I plan on sharing this sometime in the future.
Examples:
The numbers that start with the letter C - Oakland Chamber of Commerce?
Boat landing on Lake Merritt at 18th Street and Lakeshore Avenue in the Peralta Heights district of Oakland, California.ohrphoto.districts.115.jpg
The numbers that start with letter H - Havens Real Estate Co.?
Gazebo and pergola at the main entrance to the still largely undeveloped Havenscourt Tract at Havenscourt Boulevard and East 14th Street (later International Boulevard) in Oakland, California. - ohrphoto.districts.040.jpg