Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • 137

I Redwoods Atop Oakland Hills First Brought Settlers Here (The Knave is on vacation. Presented Here today is a reprint of one of The Knave reports of the past that brought much mail to his desk. It is a story of Oakland's earliest industry as told by Sherwood D. Burgess in an early issue of the California Historical Society Quarterly The 1849 lumber mill built above Dimond Canyon is depicted here by Tribune staff artistjteyiAarta "marked the site of the Eastbay 's redwood forests. Today we see but the small second-growth redwoods in the Oakland hills and can only imagine the extent of the original forest.

URGESS tellsnasthatln the early 1840's the names of John Sutter, Nathan Spear, Wil of San Antonio, or both," Burgess says. George Patterson and John Parker are two of the early whipsaw-yers to fell Eastbay redwood trees and sell the timbers to Sutter who had settled in the Sacramento Val-ley. Harry J. Bee also came to this side of the bay from the Santa Cruz redwoods. Two Frenchmen, Sicard Leroy, found Yerba- Buena jvrthout lumber ior building purposes in the summer of 1841 and exploited the Eastbay redwoods.

Nathan Spear and Capt. William S. Hinckley were here with mill that turned out shingles and planks. Not until 1846 was there a breaking point. That was the year that American immigrants arrived and displaced the adventurers who had jumped-ship in the harbors of San" Francisco and Monterey.

was during this period that Elam Brown met William A. Leidesdorff who sold him his Rancho Acalanes (Lafayette)." The Harlan family also came to the redwoods in 1847, bringing with Jhem.a-helper named Richard" Swift. And early in 1849 Harry Meiggs sent loggers over to the San Antonio trees. During ,1848 timber from the San Antonio forest went to Dr. Robert Semple who shipped across Suisun Bay to his newly founded Benicia.

Lumber from the -Moraga swent torthe" building of Martinez. "Total population of the Eastbay woods in late 1849 must have been in excess of 100 residents," Burgess reports. Then came the steam sawmills The first steam mill went up in 1850, although an unknown Frenchman had begun construction of a steam mill on Palo Seco Creek a short distance above Dimond Canyon in late 1849. its completion," Burgess" says, "the mill passed into the hands of Harry Meiggs who later sold it to Volney THE FIRST signs of economic life in Oakland centered in the hills and not at the water's edge on San Francisco Bay. It a lumber redwood lumber and not the real estate manipulations of Horace W.

Car-pentierr EdsonAdams or-A Jr Moon that first attracted men to la--bor and dwell in the Eastbay more than 112 years ago. First to point this out was Sher- wood D. Burgess who received his A.B. and A.M. degrees (in history) from, the University of California at Berkeley.

Next he found two of his history -making theses published in the California Historical Quarterly, one on "The Forgotten Redwoods of the East Bay," and another concerning "Lumbering in Hispanic California." Today Burgess is assistant director of Healds Business College in Oakland. Burgess admits that Carpentier, Adams and Moon might well have "been the first to plan Oakland as a bedroom to San Francisco, but at least 10 years before the advent of these realty speculators, loggers were hauling their loads of redwood from the Eastbay hills to the. San Antonio emfearcadero. These redwood timbers from the Oakland hills helped San Francisco rebuild five different times after disastrous fires in 1851 alone. There's no 'doubt about it, Oakland was once a bustling lumber town.

Perhaps the first sawmilling town of importance in By 1860 only a "sea of stumps" liam Leidesdorff, Elam Brown and Harrjr i swereassbciated with lumbering in this area. "Before 1849," he reports, "the entire forest was known as the San Antonio redwoods, its name being derived from the Peralta's Rancho San Antonio. "But during the American period three distinct areas were recognized. 1. The San Antonio redwoods became limited to a forest section on the skyline and the western slopes of the hills.

2. The area in the canyon formed by Redwood Creek (now Redwood Regional Park) was known as the middle Redwoods." 3. Farther in the -canyon of upper San Leandro Creek, were the a a redwoods." There is some evidence that for-. signers may have been logging in these San Antonio redwoods in 1834. Again studying the Burgess papers we learn that the comman-dante of the San Francisco presidio complained to the Monterey assembly foreigners were destroying forests within his jurisdiction.

"These could have been in the San Mateo region or in the vicinity ONE of the first Americans to arrive in the San Antonio for- est 'was Napoleon Bonapart Smith accompanied by his brother, Henry Clay Smith (recognized as the father of Alameda County) and a friend, William They had come down to Yerba Buena from Sutter's Fort, but wasted little time before proceeding to the'redwoods. "During the summer and fall of 1847," Burgess says, "the Smith brothers along with Elam Brown and Bill Mendenhall whipsawed lumber and hauled it to the San Antonio embarcadero, what we know today as the foot of 14th Avenue. It OTHER mills and lumbermen followed. However, most of the mills were in the middle redwoods. Thomas and William Prince established a mill there in 1852.

By the middle of that year Oakland, Clinton, San Antonio, Alameda, Continued on Page 30 4'1 i.M w..