A Picaresque History of the Port of Oakland

An evil-smelling strip of muddy tide lands with an occasional strip of sandy beach; on one side a flotsam-filled creek and on another a vast bay of salt water; on the shore a few scattered shacks and dusty rutted roads.

Nothing to conjure visions of wealth and splendor; no suggestion of commercial activity; nothing to call up dreams of ships wet from the seaways. carrying cargoes of perfumes and spices. guano and pig iron, rocking chairs, rifles and the myriad accoutrements of a vigorous civilization.

No grating roar of winches. no staccato spat of wharf tractors, no hooded acres of echoing warehouses. This was the Oakland waterfront in 1850.

Three young men tied their fortunes to this, in the days when Alameda County was a cattle range. Three young men, two of them educated in law, and the other schooled in the trading posts of the early west. A trio who had rounded the Horn under canvas. seeking fame and fortune in a new land, answering the world- resounding cry of California gold.

There was Andrew J. Moon, a lawyer but also a man of action and commonly referred to as "Old Andrew" to distinguish him from his nephew, though he must have been a young Ulan in the fifties.

There was Edson F. Adams, calling himself a trader—a Connecticut Yankee born, canny, and with a sixth sense in matters of land values and investments. He was twenty-six, the same age as the third member of the group, and proved to be an able lieutenant to Horace W. Carpentier.

Young Carpentier hailed from New York. He was a graduate of Columbia with the class of 1848 and two years later appeared in California. He had made the law his profession, or rather his business, and it was his shrewd legal mind which brought forth many an ambitious plan the trio were to execute later.

It is known that Adams and Carpentier had been fellow passengers for five days on a sloop that carried miners and supplies between San Francisco and Sacramento, five days on a journey that today requires but twenty minutes by air. This time may have been well spent in cementing a friendship which possibly had its beginning on the long voyage around Cape Horn.

The world went very well in those days. but "manana fashion," for Don Luis Maria Peralta owned it. Don Luis considered the little band of squatters was beneath his notice. They were the hated gringos with no background save the oaks that stood behind their tents and cabins; foolish Druid-like people who believed that trees were of more use to them than the favor of kings.

But the Peraltas were passing. A new order was emerging from the economic chaos of the early 1840’s. Gold had been discovered. San Francisco across the bay. was growing. There was need for lumber. The gringos had come to stay.

The Peraltas had never fouled their fingers with commerce. Fighting was more to their liking. As became the haughty scion of a noble race, the Don chose to ignore the squatters on the mud flats. They were not as much bother as the coyotes, nor so amiable as his cattle. To the grandee the three young men and their confederates were of much less importance than his dogs.

However, there is no evidence that the first settlers along the estuary were greatly concerned over Senor Peralta’s disdain. They were no more interested in Don Luis Maria Peralta than he was in them. They had made the woods their chief interest. not because they loved the woods but because the lumber from the redwoods and oaks could be traded for gold and they proposed to get their gold with the axe and saw instead of pick and pan.

Soon after the beginning of the gold rush, men disappointed in their search for the precious metal drifted back to San Francisco, usually exhausted physically and financially, unable to engage in business in the growing metropolis. Many moved to more remote areas where food and shelter could be obtained by labor and for the most part without money.