Oakland Long Wharf
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The Oakland Long Wharf, later known as the Oakland Pier or the SP Mole was a massive railroad wharf and ferry pier in Oakland, California. It was located at the foot of Seventh Street.
The pier began as a smaller ferry pier extending from Oakland Point (previously named Gibbons Point) westward into San Francisco Bay. In 1868, the Central Pacific Railroad acquired this pier and immediately began extending and improving it and renamed it the Oakland Long Wharf. This wharf was used by the CPRR for transporting freight cars over to San Francisco starting in 1871. Part of the wharf was filled in between 1879 and 1882, thus creating a mole. Local commuter trains also used the pier, while the transcontinental railroad trains used another wharf in nearby Alameda for about two months in 1869 (September 6 - November 7). On November 8, 1869, the Oakland Long Wharf became the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad. Thereafter, ferries carrying both commuters and long distance travelers operated between the Long Wharf and San Francisco. Beginning on January 15, 1939, electric commuter trains from East Bay points no longer ran to the Long Wharf (by then known as the SP Mole or, officially by the Southern Pacific, as Oakland Pier). Instead, they operated over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco. However, regular passenger trains continued to run to Oakland Pier until 1958, when the last Southern Pacific ferryboat service from the Ferry Building in San Francisco to Oakland Pier was discontinued. After that, service to San Francisco was by bus over the Bay Bridge from Oakland's 16th Street Station.
After the Central Pacific's operations were consolidated under the Southern Pacific, the Long Wharf was improved and the terminal buildings at the end of the pier rebuilt. Throughout its existence, progressively greater portions of the bayshore tidelands were filled in. The pier remained in service until 1958. It was demolished in the 1960s to make way for an expansion of the burgeoning Port of Oakland's container ship facilities. Today, the only thing that remains of the SP Mole is the pier's switchman's tower which was restored as part of a small commemorative park.
The mole in its latter years can be seen at the beginning of the 1957 movie Pal Joey as Frank Sinatra's character makes his way to the ferry.
[edit] Bibliography
- "A Long Wharf with a Massive Mole" from A Brief History of Oakland (1994) by Robert Douglass
- "Southern Pacific's Western Division", John R. Signor, Signature Press, 2007
- "Red Trains in the East Bay", Robert S. Ford, Interurban Press, 1977
[edit] External links
- Photo: Oakland Long Wharf from Goat Island (Yerba Buena Island) 1886
- alamedainfo.com
- CPRR Museum: Oakland Long Wharf
- CPRR Museum: SP Publ. "From Rail to Trail"
- Oakland Long Wharf is at coordinates Coordinates:
