The Army Corps of Engineers began turning San Antonio Slough into the Oakland Harbor in 1874. Under George Mendell’s able command, they had created training walls and deepening channels for ship traffic. Their work was scarcely done, however. The real challenge for the Corps came with the creation of a tidal canal from the eastern shore of Brooklyn Basin though Brickyard Slough into San Leandro Bay. This canal was key to the project. It would serve as the conduit to carry the ebb tide rushing into Brooklyn Basin twice a day, cleansing the basin of bottom silt and debris.
Under Mendell’s direction, the Corps surveyed the land where Hermann Krusi’s San Francisco Bridge Company would later cut through the earth to create the canal. This part of the project took until 1880 to complete.
The bulk of the money from this phase went toward settling with the landowners who would lose their properties. Some $40,000 went into 11 property owners’ pockets. Everyone, with the exception of Alfred A. Cohen, came away from the table happy. He stood to lose the most. His losses included a swath of land that stretched between today’s Fruitvale and High Street bridges in Alameda.
Cohen also saw how the scheme would sever the neck of the peninsula that the Central Pacific Railroad depended on to bring rail traffic in and out of Alameda along a line that Cohen once owned. He sued and lost. In the end, however, the Fruitvale Bridge would span the Estuary carrying both trains and motor traffic.
Historian Dennis Evanosky and Alameda Post Publisher Adam Gillitt will take you on a guided walk to explore the tidal canal that the Army Corps of Engineers planned, and Hermann Krusi’s San Francisco Bridge Company created. We’ll learn about the interesting role this canal was supposed to play in “cleansing” that Brooklyn Basin and about the dam that was never built. As we cross the High Street Bridge, Dennis will explain just why the canal takes a sudden curve near the bridge. Join us for a 90-minute tour on Saturday, June 29, or Sunday, June 30. Tickets are $20 each. We’ll meet at Marina and Windsor drives, just west of the High Street Bridge, at 10 a.m.
The project could have continued, but money was short. Finally, in 1888, some eight years after the Corps of Engineers had surveyed the land and settled with the landowners, Congress awarded an additional $40,000 to begin cutting through the earth. The federal government awarded San Francisco Bridge Company the contract and, with Hermann Krusi in charge, turned the first “spade” of earth on February 18, 1889.
Historian Woody Minor describes the scene: “A rail-mounted steam shovel broke ground at a point in a field of wild mustard near Fruitvale Avenue.” Despite heavy rains in January 1890, Krusi and his men finished the task, digging the canal from Fruitvale Avenue west to the Brooklyn Basin in November of that year.
In 1891, the year after Krusi completed cutting the canal from Fruitvale Avenue to Park Street, he took on the second part of the project to create the channel through to San Leandro Bay. As Krusi completed his task, the Corps of Engineers put the finishing touches on the Park Street Bridge, the first of three that the Corps agreed to build in exchange for permission and rights-of-way to dig the tidal canal. The Park Street Bridge rose up at cost of $50,000.
Plans did not originally call for any of the three tidal canal bridges to serve ship traffic. The Corps envisioned the canal as a funnel to force San Leandro Bay’s ebb tide into the Brooklyn Basin. Like the water flowing through the training walls on the west end of the harbor, San Leandro Bay’s ebb tide would enter the funnel the Corps had created in the form of the tidal canal. The force of these waters would help rid the Brooklyn Basin of sand bars or other natural obstacles. In the end, the Corps agreed to build iron swing bridges. Perhaps, one day they might open to maritime traffic.
Park Street Bridge
The Corps announced that the Park Street Bridge would open in December 1891 but delayed inaugural foot and horse traffic until early 1892. Financial disaster struck in the form of a worldwide depression that same year. Fortunately, the Corps already had the funding to complete the training walls and dredge the three channels that would carry shipping to and from the Brooklyn Basin for depth.
The Park Street Bridge as we know it today, designed by the Alameda County Surveyors Office, wouldn’t be completed until 1935. The opening-day festivities on October 6, 1935, included the marriage of Edward Drotloff of Oakland and Edith Bird from Alameda at midspan. The wedding symbolized the unity of the two cities. All did not go well that day, however. The Oakland Tribune reported that “police control was necessary to keep the crowd in check.”
Fruitvale Bridge
Darby Langdon & Company built the Fruitvale Bridge for the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1894 at a cost of $53,759, as a wrought-iron through-truss swing span. A. A. Cohen, who had sued to stop the canal, partly because it would interfere with railroad traffic, did not live to see trains crossing the tidal canal. He died on November 16, 1887, in his luxury rail car in Kansas. He was on his way home from New York. His son, William, who worked as his father’s secretary, was by his side.
The tracks from the 1894 bridge were removed in 1951 by the Southern Pacific Railroad in order to build a vertical-lift railroad bridge. In 1973, a new automobile/pedestrian bridge spanned the canal there. The United States Congress voted to name this bridge for Congressman George Paul Miller and Alameda County Supervisor Leland Warren “Lee” Sweeney. Ten months later, on November 7, 1972, Miller lost his seat to Pete Stark.
Sweeney began his political career as a member of the Alameda City Council. As a supervisor, he played a key role in seeing the new bridge built. Both men lived in Alameda. Records show Sweeney living on Southwood Drive and Miller on Benton Street. Sweeney passed away in 1974, just a year after the bridge opened. Miller died in 1982.
High Street Bridge
The Harrison Bridge Company built the first High Street Bridge in 1894. In May 1901, a fire rendered the bridge impassible. The California Bridge Company rebuilt the bridge, but on May 22, 1909, a second fire destroyed the swing span and part of the approaches. “The fire broke out at 2:30 o’clock,” The San Francisco Call reported. “It was seen by workmen, who gave an alarm to the Fruitvale and the Alameda fire departments.”
The newspaper informed its readers that the fire so badly damaged the Oakland side of the bridge that “it dropped into the canal in huge masses of charred embers.”
In the meantime, the San Francisco Bridge Company had taken on the second part of the project to cut the canal through to San Leandro Bay, but financial disaster struck in the form of a worldwide depression in 1892. Col. Mendell retired in 1895—with only the Park Street Bridge completed.
Bay Farm Bridge
In the midst of this financial downturn, Capt. Joseph Kuhn took over as the Corps’ District Engineer. He showed no interest in completing Mendell’s task and scrapped the idea of building a dam on San Leandro Bay. Not long afterwards, the Corps appointed Colonel Charles Suter as District Engineer.
Suter faced angry community members complaining that the tidal canal had become a cesspool. Alameda had built its sewer system to flush into the waters of a canal that should have held water by now. It did not.
When the federal government opened its pocketbook again, the Corps had the money to pay San Francisco Bridge Company the money to finish opening up the tidal canal.
This involved cutting through Brickyard Slough on the eastern end of the tidal canal. The 1876 Alameda County map shows that the Corps of Engineers planned to dig the canal north of today’s Tidewater Avenue and into East Creek.
Because the idea of building a dam at today’s Bay Farm Bridge was no longer on the table, the Corps likely decided to take the more expeditious route and cut through the more malleable slough.
When they met on August 7, 1902, Alameda was a peninsula no longer.
In 1901, contracts were awarded to complete the project. One of the Army Corps’ dredges went to work on the west end of the tidal canal near the Park Street Bridge. On the east end of the project, Brickyard Slough’s marshland gave way easily to Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific Company’s hydraulic dredge Olympian. The dredge cut and trimmed the canal east of the High Street Bridge, eating its way through to San Leandro Bay.
After the dredges did their work, Krusi and his men worked their way westward, using a series of temporary dams to coax water through the tidal canal from San Leandro Bay to meet the waters they were holding back just west of the Park Street Bridge. When they met on August 7, 1902, Alameda was a peninsula no longer.
“Alameda Now an Island,” the Daily Argus declared on its front page the following day.
Mendell lived long enough to see the project through. He died on October 29, 1902. Krusi later moved to the Philippines to oversee harbor improvements in Manila Bay. He passed in 1940.
Ups and Downs of Drawbridges
Despite water flowing beneath the three tidal basin bridges none had ever swung open to allow a single ship to pass through. In 1910, eighteen years after the Park Street Bridge opened to foot and horse traffic, the government in Washington D.C. offered Alameda County the opportunity to take responsibility for operating the bridges. The Alameda County supervisors accepted the offer on August 25, 1910.
“The supervisors will take charge of the bridges on condition that Alameda County will pay for their maintenance and provide employees and power to swing them open when necessary, something the federal government has never been willing to do,” The San Francisco Call told its readers.
Repairing the three bridges and having them pass the Corps of Engineers’ inspections delayed their opening to maritime traffic until December 19, 1913. Even then, the bridges did not function properly.
The front page of the Oakland Tribune that day reported that Jack London could not sail his Sea Wolf through the open span of the Fruitvale Bridge because the bridgetender could not pry the bridge open thanks to the “rust of ages.” Ark dwellers on the shore cared little about the mishap. They shouted their delight to see the famous writer.
Dennis Evanosky is the award-winning Historian of the Alameda Post. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Dennis-Evanosky.
