From the former shipbuilding capital of the world in Richmond, to suburbia rising from an old dynamite plant at Hercules, to Oakland, with its lonesome container cranes, and down to the South Bay’s Working Waterfront at Redwood City, you never know what you will find around San Francisco Bay. The diversity that we enjoy is unbelievable.
By Wes Starratt, Senior Editor
Published: July, 2005
From the former shipbuilding capital of the world in Richmond, to suburbia rising from an old dynamite plant at Hercules, to Oakland, with its lonesome container cranes, and down to the South Bay’s Working Waterfront at Redwood City, you never know what you will find around San Francisco Bay. The diversity that we enjoy is unbelievable.
Richmond’s Shipyards
While growing up in the Bay Area, one of my childhood idols was "can do" genius Henry Kaiser, who built the dams that made it possible for us to live in the West. I am still impressed with the man who, in 1940, had the vision to declare to skeptical British officials standing in Richmond’s empty mud flats (now known as "wetlands"): "Here are our Shipyards," and then launch the first ships for embattled wartime Britain, in just nine months.
As our country was plunged into World War II, Kaiser’s firm employed 90,000 men and women at his four Richmond shipyards, which were turning out ships at a rate of one every other day. They turned out the "Liberty," and later, "Victory" ships on a production-line basis… more ships than had ever been built anywhere at anytime!
Henry Kaiser was more than a shipbuilder, a contractor, and an entrepreneur, however. Not far from those shipyards, on Cutting Blvd., Kaiser built one of his first hospitals, as a service to his shipyard workers. The building is still there, although, it is sadly rotting away behind a broken fence; but the prepaid medical system that he founded has grown into one of our country’s largest healthcare systems, and it continues to thrive.
Kaiser was a statesman and the National Chairman of the Committee that lead to the formation of the United Nations. He came within a hair’s breath of being chosen as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944.
More than a decade ago, I organized a celebration at Marina Bay Park on the site of Kaiser’s largest shipyard. Mayor George Livingston was there, along with Kaiser’s descendants and officials from Kaiser Engineers. We dedicated the site with a plaque that reads: "On this spot in 1940, ‘can do’ construction man and entrepreneur, Henry J. Kaiser, established the largest of four shipyards in Richmond, having a total of 27 shipways and employing more than 90,000 shipyard workers, who built a total of 747 Liberty, Victory, and Naval ships that helped ensure the Allied victory in World War II."
Of course, the shipyards are no more. But the plaque is still there, mounted on a cement pedestal, along the waterfront of a peaceful park called "Marina Green." This plaque is one of three bronze, historic landmark plaques approved by the Richmond Museum Association, the Richmond Arts Commission, and the City of Richmond in 1990. The other two plaques were last seen in the back of a closet at city offices. Some of us are still waiting for these two plaques to be installed and dedicated in ceremony to commemorate some rich US history marked at the City of Richmond.
Richmond’s Ports
One of the plaques is for Ellis Landing, the city’s first port facility, which was started in 1860 at a site near the foot of Harbour Way. There, British-born, 1849 Gold Rush miner, George Ellis purchased 11 acres of mud flats, and began sailing scows to carry farm produce, freight, and passengers between San Francisco and, what is now, Richmond. So, city has had ferry service to San Francisco for 145 years! The city has also been a port ever since, and handles the largest volume of cargo on the Bay, largely because of the crude oil and petroleum products moving across Chevron’s Long Wharf near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.
The third landmark plaque is at Point-Richmond on the site of the arrival and departure of Santa Fe’s first transcontinental train. The plaque notes that, "On the morning of July 3, 1900, Point Richmond celebrated the departure of the first train for Chicago. That same evening, the first westbound arrived, thus inaugurating transcontinental rail service with connecting ferries to San Francisco" at the deep-water Ferry Point. In addition to freight and passenger train service, Santa Fe initiated water service between Richmond and San Francisco, Oakland, and Tiburon, using ferries, tugs, and barges. Santa Fe’s "navy" served the Bay Area, until the final tug and barges were phased out in the mid 1980s.
Richmond had ferries as long as Santa Fe ran passenger trains through the Point Richmond tunnel to Ferry Point. Ferry service revived briefly following the 1989 earthquake, which put the Bay Bridge out of service. A temporary ferry float was built at the end of Harbour Way, probably not far from Ellis Landing. The new service, on one of Red & White’s old ferries, may have been almost as slow and infrequent. Ridership dropped and operations ceased after about a year.
Today, the city is anxious to establish a high-speed ferry service. Working with the Water Transit Authority (WTA), the engineering firm URS has been engaged in a ridership study focused on the fantastic amount of waterfront, residential developments taking place around Marina Bay. It seems as if developers have suddenly discovered the vast stretches of vacant land along Richmond’s shoreline where the shipyards used to be. Houses are going up everywhere, and some of the new residents could use high-speed ferries to get them to work.
To put a ferry service in operation, Richmond is looking at a pot of money from Contra Costa County’s sales tax revenue, but so is the City of Hercules. There is sufficient funding for only one ferry service. It will be an interesting race to watch.
Hercules: Dynamite to Some, Transit Hub to Others
Moving northward from Richmond along the former Southern, and now Union, Pacific railroad tracks, along San Pablo Bay and past Pinole Point, we reach the town of Hercules, aptly named as the former site of the area’s largest black powder and dynamite plant.
Started in 1881, the plant was spread out over a vast tract of land along the Bay. In driving past the area as a kid, I remember seeing narrow-gauge railroad tracks leading to storage bunkers in the hills. According to the Chamber of Commerce, the plant was the number one producer of TNT in the US, and a pretty dangerous place — with at least 59 lives lost from explosions. The plant stopped producing dynamite in the 60s, and closed in 1977 after being taken over by a group of investors.
Today, Hercules is a growing suburban community of 23,000 residents. With the Bay and the railroad on one side and Interstate 80 and Highway 4 on the other, Hercules hopes to become a regional transportation hub, with plans for a Transit Village and Waterfront Development. But the city is competing with Richmond for money from the Contra Costa sales tax for a transportation hub that would include ferry service, although the Bay is shallow there and a pier, as well as dredging, may be required.
Hercules city planner Steve Lawton advised us that the city has recently been designated as the location for a railroad station for the Capital Corridor, the commuter train between the Bay Area and Sacramento. "Hercules is planning a series of transit-oriented developments around the proposed ferry terminal and the nearby railroad station. This would be Hercules’ Waterfront District."
Oakland’s Lonesome
Container Cranes
As we glide up the estuary between Oakland and Alameda on the "Peralta" or the "Encinal" ferries from San Francisco, we can’t help but notice the huge cranes designed to load and unload containers from the ships at the Port of Oakland. The container-shipping concept was born in Oakland, thanks to the foresight of former port director Ben Nutter.
At one time, Oakland was the number one container terminal on the Pacific Coast, but with southern California’s exploding population and shorter rail connections to Texas, the Gulf, and the Southeast, the combined ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach became the prime destination for container ships on the West Coast.
Regular ferry riders are probably aware that there are not as many ships along the estuary as there were at one time, and that many of those container cranes have their booms raised in the inactive position. The ships have gone to Los Angeles / Long Beach, where last year the congestion grew so much that at one time, there were as many as 50 ships at anchor waiting to enter the harbor.
One reason the container ships have gone south is that the ships have been getting larger, to the point where they now handle 8,000 containers. These large ships have not been able to navigate in Oakland’s shallow water. But the Port of Oakland is fighting back.
Wilson Lacy, Port Director–Maritime for the Port of Oakland, said, "Right now, our port is running between 40 and 50 percent of capacity… Our real bottleneck is dredging … We will have the deepening done to 50 feet by the first quarter of 2006, but it is only 46 feet now (at low tide)," larger ships draw about 47 feet.
So, the big container ships from Asia make their first West Coast call in southern California to unload containers for the vast local market, plus transcontinental rail, and then come to Oakland, a good deal lighter, and riding higher in the water. Here, they unload containers for northern California markets and load containers with agricultural exports from the central valleys, ranging from cotton to rice and nuts to alfalfa. With deeper water in its channels, Oakland hopes to snag some of those container ships for a first call in Oakland, where they could unload not only local cargo, but also containers bound for Chicago and the Midwest. That would make a lot of difference to the port’s economics and would put a lot more longshoremen to work.
So, maybe in another year or so as you move up the estuary in your high-speed ferry, perhaps then, operated by the Water Transit Authority, you will see more of those crane booms in the horizontal position unloading containers.
Redwood City, The South Bay’s Working Waterfront
Redwood City has been the South Bay’s working waterfront since the last century when it became a deep-water port for exporting redwood lumber from the nearby mills. Today, the port is focused on exporting scrap metal, as well as importing materials for the building industry, including cement, gypsum, bauxite, and aggregates. Redwood City hopes to become a terminal for the WTA’s regional ferry service, but South San Francisco has moved ahead of it, because there’s only so much San Mateo sales tax money to go around. As Veronica Sanchez, WTA’s Manager of Governmental Relations, explained, the problem with Redwood City is that "there is not a huge employment center close to the port, so we are not even at Phase One for Redwood City."
Like most other Bay Area ports, dredging is essential for keeping its channels open. Redwood City’s biggest threat in recent years has been the lack of federal funding for the maintenance dredging of its 30-foot channel by the US Army Corps of Engineers. However, thanks to the formation of the Redwood City Dredging Coalition by local business interests, federal funds have now been allocated, and maintenance dredging is scheduled for completion by the early summer of 2006.
And that is a glimpse of our Working Waterfront… from Richmond, which gained notoriety during World War II as the shipbuilding capital of the world and now wants to revive its ferry service, to the Bay Area’s dynamite-producing capital, Hercules, which has become a sparkling suburban community and potential regional transportation hub, to Oakland where dredging is expected to open up the port to first-call container ships from Asia, and Redwood City where dredging is also rejuvenating the South Bay’s only port. Each of them has an eye on the Water Transit Authority’s soon-to-be-launched regional ferry system.
