History of Berkeley, California

Berkeley California History, Name

The town was christened "Berkeley" in 1866 after George Berkeley, Cloyne's English Bishop who wrote "Empire's path to the west takes it."

Although the Spanish "discovered" the San Francisco Bay Area in 1769, the original settlers of Berkeley for thousands of years before were a Native American group known as the Huchiun.

The 1849 California Gold Rush brought an unparalleled influx of people into the Bay Area, and by the mid-1850s a small group of settlers started clustering along the Bay's shores in what became and still is, a Berkeley neighborhood known as Ocean View.

The University of California web site was dedicated in April 1860 and U.C. in 1873. Berkeley's doors went open.

Downtown Berkeley began to develop in 1876, when one of Berkeley's founding settlers, Francis Kittredge Shattuck, convinced Southern Pacific Railroad to run a spur line through his property that served as a catalyst for new commercial development. Completed in 1878, Berkeley began a population boomlet that saw its residential rolls rise from 2,000 in 1880 to 13,000 at the turn of the century. Yet the real boom was to come, as the population climbed to 50,000 by 1912 from better transport networks and an influx of San Franciscans displaced by the earthquake in 1906.

Berkeley continued to grow and to develop to her current status. During the turbulent 1960s when the U.C., the national spotlight focussed on the city. Campus Berkeley was the focal rod for the day's political consciousness and activism. The "Free Speech Movement" left a legacy that is very much a part of the Berkeley contemporary.

Today the population of Berkeley is around 105,000 inhabitants and hundreds of business entities. This is unlike every other city in the country, too. Berkeley's contrasts are energizing and contribute to its cosmopolitan air and civic vitality. It has an international focus, though it maintains a distinctive hyper-local hue and a strong civic conscience.