46 Fun Facts About Oakland

Oakland is the seat of which California county?

Alameda County's seat left San Leandro in 1872, the same year Oakland absorbed its neighbour, a town called Brooklyn.

Which Native people were the earliest known inhabitants of the Oakland area?

The Ohlone lived in independent villages, among them the Huchiun of the East Bay, until Spanish missionaries drew them into missions.

Which family received the 1820 Spanish land grant that covered the future Oakland and Berkeley?

The Peraltas lost most of Rancho San Antonio after the Gold Rush, as squatters and speculators settled the land that became Oakland.

Oakland's first mayor, Horace Carpentier, was ousted in 1855 after gaining exclusive rights to what?

The town's waterfront: the deal handed him its wharf and dock fees for decades, and citizens who found out forced him from office.

What kind of trees in the Oakland hills did sailors once line up to avoid a hidden rock in San Francisco Bay?

Coast redwoods: two tall ones on the ridge guided ships past submerged Blossom Rock, until loggers felled the forest to build the Gold Rush towns.

Which university began in Oakland and stayed there until moving to its permanent campus in the 1870s?

The University of California grew out of the private College of California in Oakland, using its buildings while the new campus was built.

Oakland was chosen in 1869 as the western terminal of what?

The Transcontinental Railroad's first trains to the bay, in September 1869, ended at a pier in a neighbouring town, and Oakland's Long Wharf took over that November.

Lake Merritt holds what national distinction, dating from 1870?

First official wildlife refuge in the US: Mayor Samuel Merritt pushed for the 1870 state law that banned hunting there to protect the lake's birds.

What happened to Oakland's population after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake?

It doubled with refugees, and many stayed: the census counted 66,960 people in Oakland in 1900 and 150,174 by 1910.

Businessman Francis 'Borax' Smith consolidated Oakland's streetcar companies into what?

The Key System was partly a real estate play: its streetcar lines opened new East Bay tracts that Smith's Realty Syndicate sold to buyers.

Which fruit and vegetable brand was started by Oakland's Oakland Preserving Company?

Del Monte began as a coffee blend made for guests of the Hotel Del Monte, a Monterey resort, before the Oakland firm used the name on its fruit and vegetables.

Which two students founded the Black Panther Party at Oakland's Merritt College in 1966?

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale's party began by patrolling the police, then ran free breakfasts for children and health clinics.

Which governor signed California's 1967 law against armed Black Panther patrols?

Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act after armed Panthers walked into the State Capitol in May 1967 to protest the bill.

Which double-decker Oakland freeway segment collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake?

The Cypress Street Viaduct was never rebuilt: the freeway moved to a route along a rail yard, and Oakland built Mandela Parkway, a green boulevard, on its old path.

Which video game did Will Wright start imagining while replacing belongings lost in Oakland's 1991 firestorm?

The Sims: after the fire destroyed his house, Wright had to rebuy everything from toothpaste to furniture and began asking what people really need.

Which future governor served as Oakland's mayor from 1999?

Jerry Brown, California's governor in 1975-83 and again from 2011, was Oakland's mayor from 1999 to 2007 and championed the 10K plan to draw 10,000 residents downtown.

The 2016 blaze that killed 36 people in an Oakland warehouse became known by what name?

The Ghost Ship fire gutted a warehouse where people lived and threw parties, and no building inspector had examined it in three decades.

Oakland was the second US city, after which one, to decriminalise psilocybin mushrooms in 2019?

Denver acted in May 2019, and weeks later Oakland's council voted unanimously to bar police from spending city money to punish use of natural psychedelics.

Which small independent city is completely surrounded by Oakland?

Piedmont voters chose in 1907 to become a city, and when some residents objected, a second vote that year confirmed it.

Which Oakland-born novelist wrote The Joy Luck Club?

Amy Tan began The Joy Luck Club at a 1985 writers' workshop, while she was still working as a business writer.

Gertrude Stein's line 'There is no there there' was about what?

Her razed childhood neighborhood: returning to Oakland, Stein found the house she grew up in gone, though Oaklanders still debate whether she meant the whole city.

Which famous visitor toured Children's Fairyland while gathering ideas for his own park?

Walt Disney toured Children's Fairyland before opening Disneyland in 1955 and hired its first director, Dorothy Manes, to run youth activities there.

Which two performing companies made Oakland's Paramount Theatre their home?

The city's symphony and ballet play in a 1931 movie palace that the Oakland Symphony bought in 1972 and restored after decades of neglect.

Which landscape architect, also responsible for Central Park, designed Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery?

Frederick Law Olmsted's fame made Mountain View the place to be buried, and its ridge of grand crypts became known as Millionaires' Row.

Which feature crowns the Oakland Tribune's landmark downtown tower?

Four big clocks top the tower, and Burning Man co-founder John Law spent decades keeping their neon and the TRIBUNE sign glowing.

Which former US president took part in the Bay Bridge's 1933 groundbreaking?

Herbert Hoover joined Governor James Rolph at the ceremony, while President Franklin Roosevelt set off the first blast by wire from Washington.

Which regional rail network has its Oakland hubs at MacArthur and 19th Street stations?

BART opened between Oakland and Fremont in 1972, and within a month a train-control failure sent a train off the end of the track at Fremont.

Which Fox television station is based in Oakland?

KTVU 2 aired fake, offensive names for the Asiana Flight 214 pilots in 2013, names an NTSB summer intern had wrongly confirmed, and fired producers over it.

Which headline did Oakland make in 2023?

Lost three major-league teams in five years: after the Warriors and Raiders left, the A's 2023 plan to move to Las Vegas left Oakland with no major-league team.

Which Oakland A's owner paid players a bonus to wear mustaches for a 1972 promotion, the first of three title years?

Charlie Finley's stunt stuck: most players kept their mustaches all season, and the press dubbed the champions the Mustache Gang.

The A's moved to Oakland in 1968 from where?

Kansas City lost the A's after their owner spent years courting other cities, including Oakland, until his lease there ran out in 1967.

Which coach led the Oakland Raiders to their first Super Bowl win, a 32–14 rout of the Minnesota Vikings?

John Madden posted a winning record in every one of his 10 seasons as Raiders coach, then left coaching in 1979 to become a TV commentator.

The Raiders were founded in 1960 as a charter member of which organisation?

The American Football League placed the Raiders in Oakland in 1960, and owner Al Davis later beat the NFL in an antitrust suit to move them to Los Angeles.

Which 1975 Warriors champion shot his free throws underhanded?

Rick Barry's underhanded free throws looked like a relic of basketball's early days, yet he was nearly automatic from the line and was the 1975 Finals MVP.

Which NHL team played in Oakland from 1967 to 1976?

The California Golden Seals, earlier the California Seals and Oakland Seals, played at the Oakland Coliseum Arena until moving to Cleveland in 1976.

Which USL soccer club, founded in 2018, plays its home matches at the Oakland Coliseum?

Oakland Roots SC was started by Edreece Arghandiwal and Benno Nagel, who met at an Afghan-American community soccer tournament.

Which US vice president was born in Oakland, California?

Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee in 2024 after President Biden withdrew, and lost the election to Donald Trump.

Which Oakland-born rapper, born Stanley Kirk Burrell, served three years in the Navy before Feel My Power?

MC Hammer was an A's batboy as a kid, and he got his nickname for his resemblance to home-run king Hank Aaron.

Which funk band with a famous horn section originated in Oakland in 1968?

Tower of Power grew out of The Motowns, a band Emilio Castillo started the year before, which took its new name after saxophonist Doc Kupka joined.

Rickey Henderson graduated from which school, where he was an All-American running back?

Oakland Tech's star running back turned down several football scholarship offers to sign with the A's in 1976.

Ryan Coogler's debut film dramatised Oscar Grant's 2009 death at which Oakland train station?

Fruitvale Station follows Grant's last day, and the transit police officer who shot him was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

In 1964, the future Enter the Dragon star moved to Oakland to open a studio with whom?

James Yimm Lee introduced Bruce Lee to Ed Parker, whose Long Beach karate championships put Lee before a TV producer who later cast him in The Green Hornet.

Which Oakland mayor was recalled by voters in 2024?

Sheng Thao was recalled in November 2024, and two months later a federal indictment charged her with bribery.

What was Oakland's second-most-valuable war contribution in WWII, worth $100 million in 1943?

Canning boomed because Oakland sat where rail lines met the bay, so produce from all over California reached its canneries.

Which 1928 Oakland ice cream company is credited with Rocky Road?

Dreyer's is credited with creating Rocky Road, and when later owners took the brand national, they sold it as Edy's east of the Rockies.

Who became Oakland's first mayor elected by ranked-choice voting, in November 2010?

Jean Quan came from second place to beat Don Perata in Oakland's first ranked-choice election, on voters' second and third choices, and became its first female mayor.