Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • Page 136

Oakland Tribune, Thursday, May 1, 1952 i i QAS LEB if! 'J L3HS -tl -3' I fc Ccsaerce Dictated Denies 12.X i' i 1 i 'ii -I Sr.ilh Tczxss IlSIhss IsloEisDreis 1 i Of Old EigfcTrays LUUDER TO MARKET The story of many of Oak TAKES, OVER CAL-HEV, land's main arterials is the story It ft L. Jg 5 1 it 11 Mny John Laughlcmd cmd Mrs. Frank; Frost walked from 20th and Telegraph in 1904. to picnic at Park Boulevard and Wellington" Ave. Mrs.

Frosfs husband was grandson ef Tom HUL who painted "Driving of Last Spike." From ma borax ledges of Taal Nevada (top photo) to a fabulous $275,000 mansion above Park Boulevard In Oakland (be low) such Is the story oi the rise to fame of F. M. Smith, one of the most influential men in the history of Oakland's growth. After amassing a fortune through his borax discovery. Smith came to Oakland in the '90s and his dealings in transportation, real estate and other businesses placed him near the top In bur history book.

At right he is pictured as he appeared In the later years of his life. of a lusty, expanding city which grew not only because it offered so much to Americans flooding into the. area after the Gold Rush but because from the start it supported a thriving industry. Very few realize that, even before the discovery of gold) the Oakland area was active in Most of this commerce, before 1840, was in hides, tallow and wheat which moved from Vicente Peralta's rancho to the Embarcadero San Antonio at the foot of what is now 13th "Avenue. For this reason the communities of the Peraltas had no need of a network of roads; save for minor trails, El Camino Real was the main arterial and this made possible travel between the various missions.

MOST NORTHERLY POINT The' most northerly' point of this famed road, "The King's Highway" which many do not realize thrust up the east side of the bay was at what is now San Pablo (then, known as Mission San Pablo). Moving southerly, the highway followed very nearly what is now San Pablo Avenue, crossing Oakland eastward above Lake Merritt, which was then an unbridged slough edged with marsh. Continuing, it dipped south to the Embarcadero of San Antonio, at which a small wharf accommodated the craft which carried the Peralta products' to Yerba Buena and the ships which entered San Francisco Bay to trade 'HAYWARD ROAD' From there El Camino Real moved southeast on what later was. to known as "The Hay-ward Road," and later still by its- present name, East 14th Street. San Leandro and Hay ward, then not existent, were later to be built on the famed highway.

It continued to Mission San Jose and on to Agua Caliente (now Warm Springs) and thence on to the pueblo; of San Jose de la Guadalupe, roughly following for its entire distance the route now followed by Highways 50, 9 and 17. INHERITED TWO Thus Oakland inherited two of its major arterials from El Camino Real Est 14th Street and San Pablo Avenue, and Oak-landers today ride swiftly over land where 'once caballeros and vaqueros galloped and rough, solid wheeled carts slowly creaked behind oxen. With the erection of the first steam sawmills in 1850 lumber- System began transbay electric train service over the new Bay Bridge on January 15, 1939. first, revenue train, a sightseers special, had crossed the immense span the day before, the last day of the memorable ferries. Faced with continuing losses in its transbay and urban operations, the I.E.R.

abandoned operation, of its "big red cars" early in 194! and the Key System was left as the only firm in the Oakland transportation field, i Since that time, busses gradu ally have taken over as the major mass transit vehicle. The last streetcar lines operated in Oakland early on the morning of November 28, 1948, and by now hardly any vestige of their long- chapter in Oak- land's history-Temains. as tie first electric streetcar li i. i -1 Contlaaed from Page 1I-X Buena Avenue, now 40th Street, and Smith intended to use its right-of-way as his main trunk line and connection with the projected ferry system- In 1893, i he took control of the Oakland Consolidated Street Railway and the Central Avenue Railway and sained minority interest the Alameda; Oakland and Piedmont and the California Railway. By 1894 he had merged all-of these lines into the Oakland and San Francisco Terminal Company with an authorized capital stock of $1,500,000.

By that samelyear, he had built a 2000-foot exten sion to a small pier he I bad bought at the foot of Yerba Buena Avenue. TURNS TO REALTY The new corporation under this name, at leasW-nevei became fully active, as Smith turned his attention at this point to real estate development; With he formed the Realty Syndicate with capital stock of 95,000,000, and set about buying all available land. The syndicate acquired a total of some 13,000 acres of land, extending from Mills College to North Berkeley, and an aggressive promotion of subdivisions, building streetcar lines to develop them, was started. Smith's streetcar! lines soon came to be known popularly as the Syndicate Railway During these years, Smith moved slowly, even then apparently having stretchedj hii cash fairly thin. Another reason, too, was that real estate dealings were slow in Oakland from the depression of 1893 to the turn off the century.

FORMS NEW COMPANYj' By "1898, however, he, had pulled the three streetcar lines out of the Oakland and San Francisco Terminal Company and consolidated them in a new company, the Oakland Transit Cam- Jany, which was capitalized! at 5,000,000. This consolidation gave Smith a total of 27 miles of trackage, all narrow gauge but not all the same gauge. The Central Avenue line was 3 feet 8 inches, while the other two were 3 feet 6 inches: Through exchanges of stock, he next brought into the hew corporation the California Rail way, the Highland Park and Fruit-Vale Railway, the East Oakland Street Railway and the Piedmont and Mt View Rail giving him 'a total of 64 miles of trackage. These new lines were of varying gauges and by this time it was evident to Smith that he needed expert help if he was to carry out his plans or unifying the street railway service. He brought in an expert.

W. Kelley from New York City to run the lines. CONSOLIDATION START Despite a shaky financial structure brought on by succes sive stock inflations and his borrowing, "Smith continued his march toward a transportation consolidation by incorporating another new transportation firm on March 29, 1901 the Oakland Transit with the Oakland Rail road Company added to his pre vious holdings. The last big con aolidatlon came the next year when the last independent street railway company in the! entire Oakland area the Oakland, San seanoxo ana naywaras was merged with Oakland Transit to become Oakland Transit Consolidated, capitalized at This brought the total trackage controlled by Smith to more than 75 miles. With this last consolidation, Smith realized his plan of single I street railway the Oak land Transit Consolidated--co- ordinated with a massive real estate1 development program the Realty Syndicate, and turned his attentions toward develop ment of transbay transportation.

OAKLAND SAN JOSE In 1901, he incorporated two companies with capital stock of S2.500.000 each. One was! the Oakland and San Jose Railway, which was to run from Oakland via Hayward to San Jose, where branch lines -would connect Santa Clara, Saratoga and Los Gatos. The other was the 1 San Francisco and Piedmont Railway, which was to build ai rail and ferry system 17 miles long connecting San Francisco, Oak land, Piedmont and Leona Heights. -Mft A A a nnis laiier company naa ambitious plans to build a mole. pier and i underwater tube to Yerba Buena Island, part of which would be converted; into a ferry terminal.

But when Congress balked the plan! it I was dropped and both companies were superseded by another company in June, 1902 the San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose Railway, the direct parent of the present Key System; Necessary franchises had been acquired and work, was begun to put the first part of the ambitious program rail-ferry service between San Francisco and Oakland into operation. The most striking part of the construction was trestle 3 ft miles long t-' lw Present-day High Street does not follow original road faithfully. In the wme year, 1853, Hiram Thorn built one of Oakland's famous roads, long known as Thorn Road. It was a shorter route from the Thorn lumber mill to the Embarcadero since -it followed San Leandro Creek to the skyline, then ran down Thornhill Canyon to approximately Dimond Canyon at which point its traffic moved onto Park Boulevard, or alternately onto the Broadway Terrace route to PARTS SURVIVE Parts of Thorn Road 'are now Thornhill Drive and Sobrante Road; a part has aban- -doned. There were other lumbering roads, notably Prince which fell into disuse at -the end of the sawmill era in I860; (the redwoods by then had.

been cut away); but those listed above have remained in the Oakland street system. the giant Lredwoods were not wasted, writes Sherwood D. Burgess in an excellent monograph on Oakland's, redwoods published in the California Historical Society Quarterly." they played an important role in the develop-" ment of the San Francisco; Bay region." While San Pablo Avenue (first El Camino Real, then The County Road, then San Pablo Road) and East 14th Street are Oakland's oldest thoroughfares. Telegraph Avenue is a ciose runner-up. EARLY TELEGRAPH It was first known as Telegraph Road, earning its name from the; telegraph wires which lined the road.

The first street to reach out to mid-Oakland, it continued as a dusty country road to what-is now Claremont Avenue, wound ihto the hills and along the north branch of the Temescal, finally 1 progressing into Fis)i Ranch Road and thence to Sacramento. wiui su niaujr uuicr iui3, Oakland, like Topsy, just grew. So did its contemporary towns Clinton, Brooklyn, Frui Vale, Lynn, Eden, Murray, Washington, and the areas of Oakland proper. Those who planned the streets of these communities could not have foreseen the day in 1952, when they would be combined in one great metropolitan city, with the outstretching streets and avenues of one community meeting that of the next, and all bound together -by the great reads of. over 100 years ago.

4 k. 7 i 'Vs. iana tram wnen it arrived in Oakland in 1869. A few years later, this service was extended into Alameda when the first bridge across the Estuary was completed. It was not until 1878 that this network began to be extended.

At that time the Berkeley branch from West Oakland via Shell-mound Park Stanford Avenue, Adeline Street and Shattuck Avenue was opened but no further changes were made for a quarter of a century. But when "Borax" Smith's Key System began to provide serious competition after the turn of the century, the SJ. was roused to action. In 1908 electrification began. By 1911, electrification had been completed, new equipment was in operation and new lines had been thrown out to compete with the Key System.

With the Key Systemin financial troubles, traffic on the S.P. lines showed a gradual increase' during the decade from 1915 to 1925. But then a new competitor entered the field the automobile and rev enue figures began to decline. In addition, the Key System had 1 1 A. A.

oegun us nrsi dus service in February, 1921, in the Montclair section ana mat, too, was en croaching on streetcar traffic. Beginning in 1936, the South ern Pacific segregated its urban lines into the Interurban Elv. trie Railway and it was under this name that it and the Key 1 Celebroflon on. Castro Street I) ing became a major industry. Up to this time timber had been brought out of the hills by hauling it from the woods to what is now Dimond Canyon, at the present intersection of Mountain Boulevard and Park Boulevard.

From there it moved down Park Boulevard to what is now 13th Avenue and thence to the San Antonio Embarcadero, where it was transshipped to San Fran cisco and other points. OTHER ROUTES NEEDED This route remained a major lumbering road but the require ments of the expanding com munitics of the Eastbay made other roads a necessity. In one of the' Castros (who "is not otherwise identified in source books) built a wharf at the northeastern shore of what is now Lake Merritt to which hides and lumber from the country north and1 east of Oakland were, brought via the San Antonio Trail which ran through Indian Gulch (now Trestle Glen) for shipment to San Francisco by means of light craft. Some maps show an extension of El Camino Real above Lake Merritt and it is probable that the Trestle Glen road was thus linked with the San Antonio Embarcadero. LUMBER CARRIERS At this time 1851 and for a few years thereafter nearly all east-west roads were built to carry lumber to market.

The Park Boulevard-East 13th Avenue road, which lay to the east of unbridged Lake Merritt, could not serve the downtown Oakland area nor was it practicable for hauling from the Moraga woods, which lay to its east. For this reason a new road was built in 1852 which roughly fol lowed the present line of Broad way to what is now Broadway Terrace, thence climbed to what is now Mountain Boulevard, and thence continued to Dimond Canyon and the outflowing lum ber from the redwoods' BUILT IN 1853 Still another road. was built in 1853 which lay to the east of the Park Boulevard road. This tapped the Moraga woods arid followed approximately the present line of Redwood.Road to 35th Avenue thence down, finally swinging west to San Antonio Embarcader6. via East 14th Street Completion of this road opened a new market, that in Alameda High Street was continued northward to the base of the hills, where it joined the Redwood Road-East 35th Street road.

fir? 'a Ws-r 'y-A 4MUUtiZ-. i ne connecting Oalcland end k-i Water Company and the Sierra Water Supply Company 'in addition to several other companies, nine in all, dealing in light and power. Smith, for his part, had the streetcar and ferry sys tem and vast holdings in real estate. Thus, to achieve' its first ob jective, the United1 Properties Company merely would have to merge the capital stock of the Tevis Hanford interests with those of Smith. Testifying many years later in one of the myriad-court actions which resulted, Tevis said that he and Hanford "put in everything they had" but that Smith failed to contribute 30,000 shares of Key System stock worth that was essential to the venture.

Smith') failure to contribute the stock, prevented United Properties from floating a necessary bond issue, Tevis said. PLEDGED TO BANKS Later, Tevis added, he learned that the stock in question was pledged to 275 banks for loans and that Smith was unable to raise the money to redeem it so' he could place it in the United Properties pool. Despite the complications, United Properties came into existence. It lasted only until Smith's final street railway con solidationwhich gave birth to the San Francisco Oakland Terminal Railway in March, 1912. Hanford and Tevis, appar ently, realizing that their gigantic investment structure had grown top-heavy, endeavored to separate the transit corporation from United Properties.

When Smith refused, they tried to force him into bankruptcy in July, 1913. The final dissolution of 'the tremendous company came al most Smith, little heed to sound financial practice, had borrowed heavily for his various promotions. When his long-term credit ran. out, he began borrowing on 24-hour call pledging physical of his holdings. By 1913, these 24- hour notes had reached a maxi mum of $11,000,000 and bankers and investment houses called for payment.

Smith, unable to produce, was forced into bankruptcy and the short-lived United Properties Company fell in pieces around the feet of its three promoters. CHANGE FOR BETTER A marked change for betterment followed complete reorganization of the transit system on June 1, 1923, when a new operating company, the Key System Transit Company, was formed with John S. Drum as A San Francisco' brokerage firm which had a large block of stock took control in 1927 and installed A. J. Lund-berg as president i In keeping with Lundberg's belief that each separate function should stand on its own feet, a new holding company was formed in September, 1930 the Railway Equipment and Realty Company.

Under it, the traction and ferry operations were divided among four, subsidiaries. The name was changed to Key System on February 26, 1935, and the name Key System Transit Lines evolved after; the National City Lines purchased controlling interest on May 15, 1946 and that is the name today. SJ. IN PICTURE Street railway service was first offered by the over the Sev enth Street "Local" line, the same line used by the first over- While at first it had paid little heed to Smith's ventures, the Southern Pacific began electrifying its Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda steam lines in 1908 and instituting improvements in its service, CONSOLIDATIONS MANY Meanwhile, Smith had been carrying out other consolidations. In September, 1904, he had merged the Webster Street and Park Railway Company with the Oakland Transit Consolidated to form the Oakland Traction Consolidated.

This company, in turn, was consolidated in 1906 with the Berkley Traction Company, which ran from University Ave nue north a mile on Grove Street, to form the Oakland Traction Company. He steadilv expanded his lines until by 1912 he had 101 miles at street railways 4n operation. And by that year; too, it was apparent that the operations were burdened with unprofitable lines. In March, 1912, the final transportation consolidation was carried out a sweeping merger to combine all transbay and local street railway transporta tion in Alameda County and Richmond. By this action, the Oakland Traction Company, the San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose Consolidated, the I Califor nia Railway and the East Shore and Suburban Railway Com-j a line originally started out of Richmond by Standard Oil interests, were combined in the San Francisco Oakland Terminal Railways; Company.

EMPIRE BUILDER' While all these transportation improvements and consolidations were being carried out, Smith still was pursuing the other facets of role as an "empire builder. Havens, overshadowed by his vigorous partner, split with Smith in 1910, taking with him the People's Water Com pany, which had been formed in 1906, and much of the land hold ings or tne Keaity syndicate. Smith kept the traction interests and ferry system. Not long afterward, Smith began dealings wi(h two other capitalists, W. S.

Tevis, a Bakers field banker, and R. G. Hanford, a former gold mining operator in the Feather River country. Whatever the relationship, Smith, conceived a grandiose scheme gf a gigantic holding company in the Bay area. Subsidiaries were to invade the field of public utilities water, light and power aiming at a com bine that would embrace the en tire Bay; region.

The giant firm also was to go into real estate on a scale never previously approached it was to purchase 45,000 acres of city, suburban and country real estate from Richmond I to San Jose and in the Santa Clara, Coyote and Gil roy Valleys. Also included was a vast, co-ordinated system of all transportation, shipping and freight handling on the Oakland waterfront and, of course, con trol of all local and transbay transportation. I DEAL ON YACHT The deal was consummated on Smith's yacht in New York Har bor in 1910, andi came to be known as the "yacht -i On December 30, 1910, the United Properties Company was formed with the astounding cap italization of $200,000,000. Historians point Out that there was somewhat of a solid basis for the huge firm. Hanford and Tevis dominated the Union Water Coronaay, the Bay Cities extending from the foot of Yerba Buena Avenue across! the tide lands to deep water.

The first run on the line down Shattuck Avenue in Berke ley to the foot of Yerba Buena was made on the morning of October 26, 1903, with 240 prominent Oakland area citizens aboard the initial, train. They boarded the ferry Yerba Buena for the trip to San Francisco. Residents were pleased with the new service, even though the time to San Francisco was 35 minutes rather than the promised 26 (Southern Pacific time was 55 minutes) and the ferries were wooden instead -of steel. The. fare was 10 cents a ride, or $3 4 month.

-SURPLUS TRACKS DROPPED With his transbay line in operation, Smith began unifying and consolidating his vast holdings. From September, 1903, to July, 1904, 24 pieces of roadway throughout! the Oakland area were abandoned, most of them in downtown Oakland. Ample reason for this is pointed up by the that at one time there were six different sets of tracks running down Broadway for a distance. Too, Smith had to 'contend with three different gauges of tracks among the companies he had brought under his wing. At about the same time, Smith began throwing out from his main Key System trunk lineJ From the ferry landing, 2ie laid out the 40th Street or Piedmont line in 1904; the 22nd Street line, as far as Broadway, in 1906, and then up Trestle Glen in 1 909 and the Claremont line, to 55th and Telegraph in 1906, to College Avenue in September, 1907, and then to the Claremont Hotel which he had built in December of that year.

The 12th Street line was opened to Broad way in 1909 and the Northbrae and Albany' branches of the Sacramento Street, line, which completed the basic structure of the present Key System, began operations in 1911. i Despite continued increase in passenger traffic, the records show there was no appreciable increase in! average revenue it was about the same in 1912 as it had been in 1905. Recognizing Smith during these years tried to stimulate even more traffic. He built the Key Route Inn on the 22nd Street line, the Claremont Hotel at the end of the' Claremont line, developed Piedmont Park for the Piedmont line and expanded the old Ayalla Park in North Oakland into Idora Park, a small Coney Island that lasted for years. MONEY WAS NEEDED Aware that they were ham pered by lack of capital and recognizing the need for a real money-making venture, Smith and Havens, in-1907, turned back to their plan of getting a line to San Jose open.

But by this time their credit for long-term borrowing was entirely exhausted. Finding no "takers," they resorted to their old device of "consolidation." This resulted in the incorporation in February, 1903, of the San Francisco and Bay Counties Railway, which firm promptly bought the San Jose right-of-way from Smith and Havens through an exchange of stock. The exchange completed, the "Bay Counties' line was. consolidated three weeks later with i the San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose Railway to form the San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose Consolidated Railway. 4 ji.

-V Hayward started Ma7 7, 1C2. A.