History of Rockridge Park

The area you find yourself in is part of the Rockridge Park development, which was created and sold in the 1920s as a cheaper alternative to Claremont and Piedmont. It was an explicitly white-only neighborhood where "No Negroes, no Chinese, and no Japanese" were permitted to purchase property. The racial demographics of the neighborhood remain more white than most of Oakland.

Like neighboring Temescal, it was a thriving Italian community until Highway 24 was constructed, which disrupted the neighborhood and killed local commerce. Much of the commercial area you know as Rockridge today was boarded up and vacant.