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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.
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.
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)