Leona Heights Neighborhood News

by Gordon Laverty

Oakland and the Leona Heights area have played a strategic role in West Coast history because of local natural resources. Beth Bagwell, founding president of the Oakland Heritage Alliance and author of the book Oakland The Story of a City, created a wonderful source of local history you may want to peruse. Natural resources vital to San Francisco and Oakland's past included the majestic stands of redwood trees, mineral deposits, and open space, all in the Leona area. In the 1850s, sea captains returning from the Orient to San Francisco Bay navigated by the tall stands of redwoods in the Oakland Hills to find Oakland wharves. Many of the trees were 12 to 14 feet in diameter and over 100 feet tall. The remaining redwoods in Leona Canyon are a memorial to those "grandparent" stands. At first, lumbering was a brute-strength thing, with two hardworking men using long whipsaws. Toward the 1860s, the first Oakland steam-powered sawmill, located in Redwood Canyon, began producing. Logs were hauled down to the estuary by mules or oxen along present-day Redwood Road, or down Park Boulevard to a landing at the foot of 13th Street. From the estuary, log rafts or small sailing boats got the timber to market in San Francisco to rebuild a city which, over the years, suffered five fires. Another route from the Oakland Hills was via Lafayette to Martinez. Local mineral resources were epitomized by the Leona rhyolite formations, the yellow and rusty soils visible today, which contained a high concentration of sulfur and a little silver. Mining began in the 1880s and soon produced great quantities of sulfur ore, which was taken by steam train to Richmond for processing into industrial sulfuric acid sold all over the West. Interestingly, that mining resulted in the honeycombing of the land under the present Leona Greenbelt with seven to ten miles of mineshafts, tunnels, and subterranean pits so that the hillside area was deemed undevelopable for housing by the City Council in the late 1960s. We need to oppose any planned development there. More history next month. And while we are addressing history, what a history-making month this last April was! While we need to continue to teach, pray for, and some of us march for peace, with the regime change achieved in Iraq by our courageous men and women in uniform, I believe real peace can be built.