Walking Waterhoods: Temescal Creek — Temescal Neighborhood / 51st Street

Temescal Neighborhood

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Walking Waterhoods: Temescal Creek — Temescal Neighborhood / 51st Street

Oakland, California 94607, United States

Created By: Wholly H2O

Tour Information

Temescal has seen huge ecological and social transformations. Once a Huichin Ohlone village site of great beauty along a wide and flowing Temescal Creek, it became the homestead of European settler Luis Peralta's youngest son, Vicente, who built his home along the creek only to be supplanted by a Connecticut settler, Solomon Alden, a descendent from a Mayflower pilgrim.

Over time, Temescal progressed from an unincorporated village largely inhabited by Italians (the Chinese laborers who worked there were not allowed to live there) into a flourishing neighborhood of Oakland. In this section of the tour you'll see how the creek was transformed from a state of beauty, well-used by humans, to becoming completely invisible, the creek and it's ecosystem buried underground.


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What You'll See on the Tour

The Grove/Shafter Freeway, so named because its route ran along Grove Street (now Martin Luther King Blvd) and Shafter Street, was a highly controversial addition to the Temescal neighborhood. Originally planned to run through Berkeley alo... Read more
Don Luis Maria Peralta received a land grant from the Spanish government for what is nearly the entire San Francisco East Bay. He passed on parcels of this property to his sons. His youngest son, Jose Vicente Peralta, was gifted the land ... Read more
Idora Park was a 17-acre amusement park known as a "trolley park". The parks were built along or at the end of street car lines so they were easily traveled to by the general public. The park was constructed in 1903 on the site of a willo... Read more
Temescal Creek is named for the sweat lodges that once existed in several locations along the creek, positioned so those using the seat lodges could cool down afterward. One may have been maintained in the area of 51st and Telegraph, wh... Read more
Misnamed scientifically as Agraulis vanillae, the Gulf fritillary has nothing to do with vanilla. Rather this bright orange butterfly traveled up from Southern California in the 1950s on it's host plant, passion flower (passiflora), after ... Read more
The dark-eyed junco (Agraulis vanillae) is a long-tailed, round-headed bird in the sparrow family. They are hugely common throughout the US, particularly in winter, and often found searching for seeds and insects on the ground. When you're... Read more
Fire Station 8, the newest of Oakland fire stations, was completed in 2002 and replaced the previous building due to aging and unsafe infrastructure. The walkway connecting the sidewalk to the entrance is an art and history storyboard about... Read more
It is likely that this area was paved and the lovely section of creek at 51st and Telegraph buried when sewer pipes were laid throughout the Temescal area in the first decade of the 1900s. The rest of the creek remained open to the sky unti... Read more
The site of this Whole Foods was once a park and gardens that then became the site of a hotel. At the time of its opening on April 2, 1871, the Daily Alta California called reported the park was celebrated "with a big flourish of trumpets... Read more
Originally named the Alden Library after one of the major early landowners in the area, The Temescal Library was constructed in 1918 with grant money from Andrew Carnegie, and is one of Oakland's six Carnegie Libraries. Carnegie built thous... Read more
In 1859, a telegraph line was constructed between Oakland and Martinez by the Alta Telegraph Company, and the existing roads which ran alongside it were then renamed "Telegraph Road". The segment of the Telegraph Road which ran from downtow... Read more
The Temescal Telegraph Business Improvement district has commissioned several artists to create public art installations throughout the Temescal neighborhood. This Temescal Creek utility box mural was created by Eduardo Valadez and is locat... Read more
Around 1873, Mr. Morse, the "Road Master" completed the bridge that spanned Temescal Creek. This changed the area drastically. The dusty -- or infamously muddy -- Temescal Avenue still had cattle and agriculture surrounding the area. At t... Read more
In addition to the streetcars and freight lines that ran through the neighborhood, during the early 20th Century many interurban passenger railways ran through northern California. Prior to regular car ownership and the construction of so m... Read more
What's going on with the pavement here? When this corner was reconstructed in 2017, smart street engineers included these permeable pavers. This means that water can permeate (also called infiltrate) into the ground below. Why? Covering urb... Read more
It is mind blowing to consider that Temescal Creek was culverted only in the 1970s through the late 1980s. Before that, the creek was open to the sky and to its ecosystem. As neighborhoods built up around the creek, and especially once roa... Read more
In 2008, The Temescal Telegraph Business Improvement District collaborated with students in Ray Patlan's class at California College of the Arts to create these panels. Several were created, and the ones that could not fit along this wall o... Read more
This substation was originally constructed in the early 1900s to meet the initial power needs of the local area. It underwent major improvements between 2010 and 2014 to increase electric capacity and complete a sesmic retrofit.
This mural was added to the PG&E substation in late 2022. It is the second "Love Letter to Oakland" mural (the first is located at 4th and Oak) and this piece honors Oakland notables like the late Oakland Symphony conductor Michael Mor... Read more
While many think of West Oakland as the home of the Black Panther Party, you are standing right in the heart of their origins. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were both born and raised in Temescal, graduated from Oakland Tech Highschool and wen... Read more
Artists Jeff Norman, Bruce Douglas, Remi Rubel and Sue Mark created an undulating public art walkway of blue and white tiles that emulaties flowing water. Orange circles with Temescal Creek factoids dot the path like stones. The creek flows... Read more
One of the newest post offices in Oakland, built in 2002, on 4900 Shattuck Ave is the site for one of Jeff Norman’s local projects, PostMark Temescal. Norman created the art piece after community residents complained about the post office... Read more
The painting depicted on this street light controller is a reference to the train bridge that once ran over Lake Temescal, which was part of the electric Key system. Prior to regular car ownership, trains ran through most areas of the Bay A... Read more
The chestnut-backed chickadee (Poecile rufescens) is an active, social and highly vocal little bird with colors to match it's West Coast habitat. Part of the Tit family, this chickadee, the only out west, is a perching bird that nests in ca... Read more
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Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is a flowering plant species of the carrot family. Originally indigenous to the Mediterranean, you will find fennel growing wild throughout the Bay Area, and are likely already familiar with the scent it gives of... Read more
On the overpass above 52nd street, you'll see "Temescal Flows", a mural that highlights the waveforms of the creek and serves as a colorful entry monument to the neighborhood. Completed in 2012 by artist Alan Leon, this project was funded b... Read more
The site of this hospital began as the estate of Solomon Alden. At the end of the Nineteenth Century, the Temescal area was known as Alden because most of the land was purchased by Alden in 1854 from Vicente Peralta. Alden was initially a f... Read more

 

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