50 Fun Facts About Berkeley

Berkeley, California is named after an 18th-century bishop and philosopher from which country?

Frederick Billings recalled George Berkeley's line 'westward the course of empire takes its way' while watching ships pass through the Golden Gate in 1866. The bishop said BARK-lee; the city says BERK-lee.

In which California county is Berkeley located?

The county was carved out of Contra Costa County in 1853. Berkeley's eastern border still follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills into Contra Costa.

What was Berkeley's population at the 2020 census?

It borders Oakland and Emeryville to the south and Albany and Kensington to the north.

Which Indigenous people lived on the site of Berkeley, leaving a shellmound at Strawberry Creek?

Their grinding pits survive in local rock formations. A park along the old BART cut northwest of campus is named Ohlone Park.

Which Spanish soldier received the land grant, Rancho San Antonio, that included present-day Berkeley?

He divided it among four sons; Berkeley lies mostly on Domingo's portion. Legal title to every parcel in the city still traces back to the grant.

In what year was the Town of Berkeley incorporated?

Its first trustees were the slate of Denis Kearney's anti-Chinese Workingman's Party. It became the City of Berkeley under a new charter in 1909.

What was the name of the waterfront settlement of saloons and industry that became West Berkeley?

Shellmound was the rail junction in what is now Emeryville; Temescal was where the horsecar to campus began, along today's Telegraph Avenue.

A 1908 statewide referendum narrowly rejected moving what to Berkeley?

It lost by about 33,000 votes. The streets laid out around the planned capitol grounds were named for California counties and still are.

How many structures burned in the fire that swept down the Berkeley hills on September 17, 1923?

A late-afternoon sea breeze stopped it short of downtown and let firefighters get control.

What land-use rule did Berkeley pioneer in 1916 to keep minorities out of white neighbourhoods?

It has been called the first such ordinance in the United States. Nearly half the city was still zoned that way in 2021; small multi-family buildings were legalised citywide in 2025.

What did the university do in 1964 that triggered the Free Speech Movement?

The arrest of Jack Weinberg in Sproul Plaza sparked mass civil disobedience that became a model for later anti-Vietnam War protest.

Which governor sent the National Guard to occupy Berkeley during the 1969 People's Park fight?

The disputed university lot south of campus stayed undeveloped for decades afterwards.

Which Berkeley street became the focal point of the hippie movement in the late 1960s?

Many of the hippies were apolitical dropouts rather than students, but in 1967-69 the counterculture and the radical left overlapped heavily.

Which restaurant, opened by Alice Waters in 1971, is called the birthplace of California cuisine?

It anchors the North Berkeley strip nicknamed the Gourmet Ghetto, which also holds Peet's Coffee's original store.

What did Berkeley's Ecology Center start in 1973 that no other US city had done before?

The city followed up by banning Styrofoam in 1988. Its last Republican mayor had left office in 1971.

What is the nickname of the North Berkeley commercial area packed with famous restaurants and food shops?

Solano Avenue further north hosts the Solano Stroll, the East Bay's largest street festival, every year since 1974.

Which legendary all-ages punk venue in West Berkeley helped launch Green Day?

Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is among the city's notable residents, along with Kamala Harris, Steve Wozniak and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Which seismic zone runs through Berkeley, straight down the middle of the university's stadium?

Photos and measurements show the fault creeping through Memorial Stadium. Seismologists rate it the Bay Area fault most likely to produce a big quake.

What is the highest point in the hills above Berkeley, at 1,754 feet?

Codornices, Schoolhouse and Strawberry creeks run from the hills to the Bay, most of them now culverted.

Which East Bay parkland occupies the upper reaches of Wildcat Canyon east of the city?

Berkeley's other green spaces include Indian Rock Park, the Rose Garden and the Marina at the foot of University Avenue.

Which element, first made in a Berkeley cyclotron, was named for the city and university?

Berkeley researchers discovered sixteen elements in all, more than any other university, including plutonium and californium.

How many chemical elements have been discovered at Berkeley?

The list runs from technetium and astatine through neptunium, plutonium and americium to lawrencium, rutherfordium, dubnium and seaborgium.

In what year was the University of California founded at Berkeley?

It inherited the land of the private College of California and the federal land-grant eligibility created by Lincoln's Morrill Act.

Which Berkeley professor invented the cyclotron in 1934 and won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for it?

His Radiation Laboratory became Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which the university still runs on the hill above campus.

How many Nobel laureates does UC Berkeley count among its alumni, faculty and researchers?

They include Jennifer Doudna for CRISPR gene editing and Melvin Calvin for the photosynthesis cycle that bears his name.

Sather Tower, America's tallest university clock tower, is nicknamed after which Venetian landmark?

Everyone on campus just calls it the Campanile. South Hall, from 1873, is the oldest university building in California.

What is the name of Cal's costumed bear mascot, introduced in 1941 to replace live bear cubs?

He is named after the Oski-wow-wow yell, and only the Oski Committee knows who is inside the suit.

What trophy has gone to the winner of Cal's Big Game against its arch-rival since 1933?

Cal students invented card stunts at the 1910 Big Game, depicting the trophy and a big blue C.

What were the university's first school colours, chosen by students in 1873?

Cal's Rally Committee, formed in 1901, still wears blue and gold rugby shirts as guardian of the traditions.

Which league did Cal's teams join in 2024 after the collapse of the Pac-12?

Berkeley teams have won 107 national championships and 223 Olympic medals.

The California Victory Cannon fires after every Cal score from which spot overlooking Memorial Stadium?

It ran out of ammunition only once, when Cal scored twelve touchdowns against Pacific in 1991.

Which Berkeley researcher modified AT&T Unix and released it in 1977, starting BSD?

Unix co-creator Ken Thompson had earlier worked on Berkeley's Project Genie, which gave Unix the idea of process forking.

Which Apple co-founder is a Berkeley alumnus?

He is listed among Berkeley's notable residents alongside Kamala Harris and Ben Affleck.

Which Berkeley collection holds tens of millions of manuscripts and maps on western North America's history?

Doe is the reference and administrative hub, with most books stored underground in the Gardner Main Stacks.

The Berkeley campus is home to the world's tallest stand of which trees?

The grove is also the tallest stand of hardwoods in North America. Strawberry Creek runs through campus in two forks.

Who became Berkeley's first chancellor when UC reorganised into campuses in 1952?

He went on to become UC president, and his 1959 restrictions on student politics were a target of the Free Speech Movement.

How much controversial debt did the university take on to renovate Memorial Stadium and build an athletic centre?

Interest-only payments eat a fifth of the athletics budget; principal repayment starts in 2032 and finishes in 2113.

What did the state's 1876 'mile limit law' ban within a mile of the new university?

Berkeley voters went further and made the whole city an alcohol-free zone in 1899.

Which day did Berkeley become perhaps the first US city to officially recognise in 2012, on September 23?

The city's 1984 domestic-partner legislation had earlier become a model for measures nationwide.

Which company ran the first electric interurban trains from Berkeley to a San Francisco ferry pier in 1903?

After the Bay Bridge opened, Key trains ran across its lower deck to the Transbay Terminal. BART's three Berkeley stations came much later.

What happened in Berkeley in the years after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake?

The East Bay escaped serious damage, and thousands of refugees, including most of San Francisco's painters and sculptors, crossed the Bay.

How many sister cities does Berkeley have?

Its climate is warm-summer Mediterranean, foggier than its neighbours because it sits directly opposite the Golden Gate.

How many parking meters were jammed, smashed or sawed apart in Berkeley in 1999 alone?

The city started phasing in centralised electronic meters in 2005 to end the vandalism problem.

In November 2014, Berkeley voters approved the first US tax of what kind?

Measure D was the first sugary-drink tax in the country, in a city that had already been first with curbside recycling and a sanctuary resolution.

On November 8, 1971, Berkeley became the first place in the US to pass what kind of measure?

It set a pattern of civic firsts, later including the country's first soda tax and an official day recognising bisexuals.

Which local theatre company has won a Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre?

Berkeley Repertory Theatre runs two stages and a school; the university's art museum and film archive moved downtown nearby in 2016.

Which philanthropist sponsored the 1898 competition that produced the campus master plan?

French architect Émile Bénard won the contest, held in Antwerp; the Hearst name survives on the Greek Theatre and the Mining Building.

What is the oldest university building in California, built on the Berkeley campus in 1873?

Designed by David Farquharson in Second Empire style, it and Olmsted's Piedmont Avenue are among the only survivors of the 19th-century campus.

The Big 'C' on Charter Hill was built in 1905 by two classes to replace which brawling campus tradition?

Rush pitted freshmen against sophomores in a race up the hill that often turned into a wrestling match, so the classes united to build the C instead.

Whose arrest in Sproul Plaza in 1964 set off the events that became the Free Speech Movement?

Weinberg was a recent alumnus and chair of Campus CORE; the movement became a precedent for student opposition to the Vietnam War.