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Three Period (1875 to 1905) Photographic Views of the Oakland Long Wharf.
*Map modified to show the entire two-mile length of the Long Wharf and inset showing San Francisco.
[Enlarged Below]
CPRR
Long Wharf, Oakland, California.
" ... When the CPRR acquired the existing Oakland Point pier in 1868, it
was already more than a mile long. The railroad soon began constructing a series
of improvements and extensions, and by 1871 multiple rail lines extended out
over two miles of wharf into deep water. That year, the CPRR launched a freight
ferry that could take 18 loaded rail cars at a time across to San Francisco.
The new structure known as the Oakland Long Wharf, allowed rail freight to be
loaded directly onto an off of ocean-going vessels. ... A massive wedge-shaped,
rock filled pier, or mole, was appended partway out along the wharf's south edge
between 1879 and 1882. The Oakland Mole, as it became known, was built to handle
all of the passenger business, leaving the entire Long Wharf available for freight.
... " From A
Long
Wharf with a Massive Mole adapted from Olmstead and Olmstead (1994) by Robert
Douglass in A
Brief History of Oakland. (see pages 5-8)
Also see Information
Concerning the Terminus of the Railroad System of the Pacific Coast by
John Scott, Daily Transcript, Oakland, California, 1871, pp. 7-9.
Oakland Long Wharf, 1905.
Oakland Long Wharf (in distance) as seen from Nob Hill, San Francisco,
1875.
Approach to the Oakland Long Wharf. From Over the Range to the
Golden Gate by Stanley Wood, R.R. Donnelly & Sons, Chicago.
1889.
Courtesy of the Bruce C. Cooper Collection.
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"Oakland
Mole" California Railroad Terminal Postcard
"A rare glimpse of the busy
Southern Pacific Railroad's busy waterfront terminal in Oakland, California,
where trainloads of passengers
would
be loaded onto giant railroad-operated
ferries for a short trip across San Francisco Bay and into the San Francisco
Ferry Building. Prior to the construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay
Bridge in the late 1930s, this was the way train passengers got from one
side of the bay to the other. Use of the facility actually traces
back to the late 1860s when the Central Pacific Railroad began transporting
freight cars across the bay from what was then known as the Oakland Long
Wharf, located at the western end of Seventh Street. The area around the
pier was
filled in in the early 1880s, and the Southern Pacific Railroad, which had
taken over the Central Pacific Railroad, expanded and enclosed the facility
into the scene pictured here. Use of the Oakland Mole declined after completion
of the Bay Bridge, but some service continued there until about 1957. The
Oakland Mole was demolished in the mid-1960s to allow for an expansion of
the Port
of Oakland cargo facilities. This postcard was published by the Newman Post
Card Co. of Los Angeles, although it says it was printed in Germany. It features
the longtime Southern Pacific slogan of being 'On
the Road of a Thousand Wonders.' "
Caption courtesy Jeffrey
Aberbach. (Modified)
