In the nineteenth century, Oakland was both a bustling industrial village and a rural farming community. The town was home to busy ax factories, a railway complex built for tourists and trade, an electric power company, a waterfall nearly as high as Niagara Falls, oxen plowing fields, and a Civil War memorial to rival any in the state of Maine. Today, Oakland is a quiet suburban town for most of the year. Its downtown does not draw the shoppers it once did, and its factories and farms can be counted on two hands. Even after two hundred years of change, Oakland continues to rebuild and transform itself for the twenty-first century.

Narrative accompanies collection of postcards about Oakland, California.

The landmark Oakland Tribune clock tower has been telling the time in neon in downtown Oakland since it was built in 1923, but the paper itself first appeared on city streets as early as 1874. For over a half century, the paper was owned and published by the influential and civic-minded Knowland family, who spearheaded efforts to modernize the Port of Oakland, construct the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge, and establish a regional park system for Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. Following the Loma Prieta earthquake, the damaged clock tower on Thirteenth Streetwhere Harry Houdini once hung by his heels above gawking crowds on Broadwaywas sadly vacant, but today it is once again busy with the buzz and bustle of the newsroom.

The California legislature granted a charter to the new community of Oakland in 1862, and a year later, the town council appointed three peace officers. When it was a dusty Western town, Oakland's major business was raising cattle to feed San Franciscans and the gold miners north of Sacramento. Year by year, as Oakland grew in size and population, the police department grew with it. The Oakland Police Department pioneered the use of call boxes, police cars, and other technical innovations. It has served the city well through good times and bad, wars, fires, and earthquakes. A large, diverse organization serving a complex multicultural city, the Oakland Police Department today accepts the challenges of policing in the 21st century.

Its place directly opposite San Francisco Bay from one of the world’s most visited cities has left Oakland to struggle against comparison from the start. It has greeted that challenge by asserting its identity as an effervescent international port city with a richly diverse, uniquely creative, and highly resilient population. Oakland consistently finds itself at the forefront of the rapid pace of change that California has helped to drive, with its history of daring experiments in social, scientific, and cultural innovation. The camera has preserved glimpses into the impacts of that change—and the ways in which Oakland has adapted to sustain itself as a charming and welcoming gateway to the Pacific. Historic Photos of Oakland collects a small fraction of the record the cameras have left behind, providing a compelling view of the colorful past of the "second” City by the Bay.