As we learned last week, the City of Alameda started life as a sand dune during the ice ages. Our story begins at least 650,000 years ago when the Hayward and San Andreas earthquake faults caused massive shifts that resulted in the base for this sand dune to rest.
For thousands of years, sand covered the land where San Francisco Bay now flows. Some of that sand gathered on higher terrain, creating three large dunes. These dunes became our East Bay. The City of Alameda rests on one of these (Bay Farm Island rests on another).
About 11,000 years ago, the earth began to warm and slip out of its ice-age mantle. Glaciers began to melt. Waters rose and the shoreline that reached out past today’s Farallon Island retreated. Gradual flooding created the bay we recognize today.
The sand soaked up the waters flowing incessantly from the hills to the east. Some of this runoff pooled in crevices and niches beneath our feet that the earthquake faults had created in the bedrock.
R. R. Thompson would later tap into one of these pools just north of the old town. He piped the artesian water there to a building on Park Street. Newcomers dug wells on their properties to nurture their gardens. In Alameda: A Geographical History, Imelda Merlin tells us that among them were two French families and settlers from places as varied as Chile and New England. Not far from the town of Alameda, three hunters lived in a tumble-down shack near the present Bay Farm Island Bridge.
According to Merlin, in October 1851, William Worthington Chipman and Gideon Aughinbaugh set up their tent near these hunters on what they called “Alameda Point.” On October 22 of that year, Chipman and Aughinbaugh purchased the entire peninsula from Don Antonio Maria Peralta. They sent for what Merlin called “a knocked-down house brought around the Horn.” They set up this two-story, seven-room dwelling at Peach and Washington streets.
Join us this weekend for leisurely walking tours of Old Town Alameda. We’ll meet Saturday and Sunday morning at 10 a.m. at the site of the Moulton Bros. wharf at Webster Street (today’s Fillmore Street) and High Street and walk the perimeter of the old town. Along the way, we will explain why the streets west of Mound are so very short and tell of the nearby Methodist school and church, as well as cemetery that once existed here. Tickets are $20 per person, and available online for Saturday, April 25, and Sunday, April 26, 2026. More information may be found at https://alamedapost.com/tours/.
In May 1853, they hired James Stratton to survey the property that they would name the “Town of Alameda” the following month. Stratton laid out 33×100-foot lots, which were auctioned at $475 each. The surveyor also laid four-acre lots east of High Street and north of today’s Encinal Avenue, which sold for $65 per acre. Merlin writes that the founders set aside this land for orchards.
By June 11, 1853, the town had a population of 33. Chipman penned in his diary that day that he was thinking of drawing up a charter for his town. Imelda Merlin tells us that he “first toyed with calling it ‘Peralta,’ then ‘Leandro City,’ and ‘Elizabethtown’ for Gideon Aughinbaugh’s late wife. They took a vote and decided on ‘Alameda.’” Not coincidentally, the state of California had established Alameda County five days earlier. Chipman and Aughinbaugh named two of their streets “Court” and “Fountain,” perhaps in an attempt to lure decision makers to establish the county seat here. It did not work.
M. W. Peck, one of the peninsula’s very early residents tells us that the first house there was an adobe pile near Jefferson Street (now San Jose Avenue) and Mound Street, home to Peter Parfait and his wife. Parfait died in 1865 and was buried nearby.
“Chipman was not altogether pleased with the results of Stratton’s Survey,” Merlin writes. He hired Horace Higley to create a new map. I will share Higley’s map on our walk.
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.
