CC: "Garrett Sutton" gsutton@sutlaw.com
John L. Davie, who later became the longest serving mayor of Oakland, took on the Central Pacific Railroad when he built a warehouse on the waterfront there, and challenged the "fence around the city" of the railroad. It became quite a conflict, and it happened in 1892. Would you happen to have the dates in which that took place? ...
–John Sutton
See,
ReplyDelete• The [Oakland] Waterfront Changes Hands
• John L. Davie vs. The Octopus
• San Francisco Call, Volume 79, Number 47, 16 January 1896
• Oakland Regains Its Waterfront
• John L. Davie
• John Leslie Davie
Also see,
ReplyDeleteHis Honor, the Buckaroo: The Autobiography of John L. Davie.
From: "John Sutton" suttonj@comcast.net
ReplyDeleteIn doing some of my own research this morning, I found that Oscar Lewis had the year wrong in his book "The Big Four." The Oakland waterfront wars occurred in 1892, not 1894.
5/22/1892: Archive of "The Morning Call" newspaper reported the severing of the railroad barge that the Central Pacific men were trying to bring ashore onto Davie's waterfront property occurred the evening prior, on May 21, 1892. Leland Stanford was President of the Central Pacific at the time.
–John Sutton
Since you're interested in the Oakland waterfront, you might enjoy seeing the webpage about the earlier spectacular 11,000 foot long Oakland CPRR Long Wharf.
ReplyDeleteFrom: "John Sutton" suttonj@comcast.net
ReplyDeleteFascinating history.
In West Oakland, to this day, there are far more two-story homes than in most of East Oakland. The proximity to the lines and the ferry made West Oakland a higher rent district in the second half of the nineteenth century. ...
–John