Crab Cove, Alameda California. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .An Out-Of-Towner's Perspective. . . . . . . . . . .

I've been doing some research - on my own - on the history and development of Crab Cove in Alameda, California. . .  with an eye towards figuring what can or should be done there: Expand it by four acres - as proposed by East Bay Regional Parks - or keep it just the way it is, but add some new housing across the street from the park.

Earliest map I could find, from 1844, on the http://alamedainfo.com/ website doesn't show Alameda as an island yet.  That won't happen for about another 60 years. . .

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Another early map, 1855 - from same source - shows a small spit of land to right of the A in BAY.

Mudflats extended for long distances from the solid ground out into the bay back in the 1800s. . . .  The mudflats on the Crown Beach/Crab Cove side of Alameda were huge:

Much of the mudflats and mud-islands areas were filled-in over the years, but there are still areas here and there, like at Crab Cove, where the mudflats are extensive at low tide. . . tho nowhere near as extensive as they were back before 1900.  At Crab Cove nowadays kids and grownups do find crabs, birds and other critters living in the mud. . . .

As an example of how much mud surrounded Alameda in the 1800s I cite this from "Alameda History" on http://www.alamedamuseum.org/news-and-resources/history/ :  " A wooden cantilever bridge (1874) connected Bay Farm Island’s 30 residents to 1,800 acres at low tide and only 300 at high tide." [emphasis added]

By 1877, still not much development can be seen in the Crab Cove area. . .  

By at least the 1870s tho, the Crab Cove area was becoming a Happenin' Place. . .  This 1886 postcard shows The Terrace Baths, an early "resort" that covered some part of the Crab Cove area and allowed swimmers to swim un-worried about bumping into fish in the Bay. I think the right-hand side (east side) of "The Terrace Baths" is where Mckay Avenue is located nowadays. . . . Take a look at the 1897 map, a bit farther below and you'll see what I mean. The Terrace Baths  and the shoreline were way different then from now. . . .    This postcard is from a website about Alameda, http://alamedainfo.com/  :

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Again citing the website http://www.alamedamuseum.org/news-and-resources/history/ :  "A destination for recreation and sporting events, resorts along the coast line provided “baths” for swimming, giant amusement centers, ballrooms and saloons with Terrace Baths opening in 1870."

In an 1895 map the upside-down "U" shape of the cove is not very distinct at all (see the area marked by the red hexagon).  And Terrace Baths must not have been big enough to warrant much attention by the mapmaker either:

                                     Closer up. . .

The northwest corner of Alameda seen in the above map(s) had the largest mudflats on the peninsula (Alameda didn't become an island until 1902, when one of the largest shipping-channel projects in the pre-Panama-Canal era finally turned Alameda into an island, after 28 years of digging and dredging.) 

This map from the year 1897, however, on page 190 in the .pdf file 

http://www.fedrealestate.gov/NeptunePointe/Documents/pdf/Phase_1_Environmental__Site_Asses_June_1_2010_Part_1.pdf

shows "{Seventh} St- Web[ster, apparently] in the upper right-hand corner. . . .   And the big "square-ish" area of water that's hemmed-in on four sides is The Terrace Baths.

A close-up of Terrace Baths:

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But by 1905, a U.S. Coast Survey map (credit http://alamedainfo.com/ again) - showed an outline of a 'cove' of some sort - in an area in or near The Terrace Baths. . . .  And lots of mud flats surrounding the entire island. . . .            

I marked the area that I think may be that of today's Crab Cove in red here again:

A close-up of that cove. . .

A Birdseye View of Alameda, published in the late 1800s or early 1900s very clearly shows the Terrace Baths area:

Neptune Gardens, founded in the 1880s, was a "sporting events" center in or near the Terrace Baths. The Gardens "became famous in 1915 under the ownership of Fred J. Croll by attracting thousands on weekends for special events such as boxing matches with John L. Sullivan and Jim Corbett."

Neptune Beach amusement park and its pools were built in 1917, on the approximate site of the Terrace Baths.  The Baths were either "supplemented" or included in Neptune Gardens in between the Baths' closing and the opening of Neptune Beach.

Many of the rides at Neptune Beach were brought from the San Francisco 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition after that world's fair closed.  I found some photos of Neptune Beach in its heyday at  http://alamedainfo.com/  and have posted them next here. . . .

The postcard I found from the late 1920s or 30s ( again from http://alamedainfo.com/ ) shows the mudflats in the background, behind the bit smaller - but "tiled" and made more like a big swimming pool - area that the Terrace Baths may have been turned into long-before the time of this postcard:

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Some things have never changed:

This Neptune Beach postcard shows the elongated pool that is also in the black and white photo postcard, above. Note the roller-coaster (the big one of the two at Neptune Beach), dubbed "The Whoopee." in the lower right corner. . . .

The Whoopee was marketed thusly. . . .

There was also a smaller coaster named "The Baby Whoopee." Both were designed by John Miller,  "considered to be the "father of the modern high-speed roller coaster," per Robert Cartmell, a coaster enthusiast and author of the book The Incredible Scream Machine.

Coney Island in New York may have made the Hot Dog famous, but Neptune Beach was the place where - many folks claim - the Popsicle and the Sno-Cone were invented!

In 1939, a road-map of the area, with Neptune Beach shown in orange:

Neptune Beach's last day of operation came in 1939, according to this video* which was taken that year at the park. . .  in color, (and a color movie was a rarity in 1939), and narrated by Alamedan Andy Pagano.
Click this link. . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssn_79ru9NQ&feature=youtu.be&t=2m42s

*disregard the title Historic Alameda 1920-1938. . . .  The narrator clearly indicates the park was closed in 1939 and that the tower was torn down around Christmastime that year.

And here's one more video about Neptune Beach by someone else - Dan Solo - who had been there. . .  Click on the arrow at the center of this:

Here's an aerial shot of the Crab Cove/Neptune Beach area and what it looked like . . . .

 (from page 94 of http://www.fedrealestate.gov/NeptunePointe/Documents/pdf/Phase_1_ Environmental__Site_Asses_June_1_2010_Part_2.pdf )

. . . . in 1939, by which time it was past it's prime. The roller coaster is in the area near the yellow "caption bubble."  It's the elongated figure-eight.  

And backing-off a bit. . . .

I can only figure that the big oval in the aerial photo is. . . .   

Still a pop-culture icon today. . . .

click below to see a recent "tie-in" bit of merchandising:

http://honourbrand.com/products/neptune-speedway

At the south end of that car-racing oval's location today is the "Glory of the Seas" building, built by the Federal Government in the 1940s as part of its huge training center, for U.S. Maritime Service officers, located on and near Mckay Avenue.  The building today is used for offices, tool shops, and storage and also has a truck storage-yard of/for East Bay Regional Parks. The second story part of the building that faces the Bay is cantilevered above the first story and curved, giving it the look of a ship's Bridge.

The great clipper ship that this building was named after was "constructed in 1869, the golden noontime of American windjammers. Glory of the Seas was the last of Donald McKay's many masterpieces. For forty years she roamed the world's oceans, carrying the world's cargoes, finding her share of adventure and triumph, earning her keep for her owners. . .<snip> . . . She passed her final decade hauling coal along the Pacific coast and serving as a floating fish cannery."  . . . .from "More About This Book, Overview" at  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/glory-of-the-seas-michael-jay-mjelde/1102081147?ean=9781889901183

I have had the honor of visiting some EBRP people who work in the Glory of the Seas building, and of going "on the Bridge" there.  Sure enough, looking out the windows overlooking San Francisco Bay from that vantage-point on "the bridge" gives one a bit of a feel for what it must be like to be on a real ship's Bridge. The original throttle and wheel - used in training of the Merchant Officers - are still there:

Truck yard and outdoor storage for EBRP are on the north and west sides of the Glory of the Seas building. . . .

Just to the north and west of the EBRP's office and yard property is a parcel (see area marked in yellow, below) that has been sitting empty for a very long time, still belonging to the Federal Government. The Feds want to sell it, but there's been some back-and-forth about whether they'll sell it to EBRP or California Department of Parks and Recreation to add on to the Crab Cove parkland for use and enjoyment of the public OR to private interests to develop it for residential use.

Back to our history. . . .  Checking out the aerial photos on pages 181 to 185 and the maps on pages 189 -196 of the .pdf file. . . . By the 1940s the land where that oval racetrack and roller coaster stood in the 1939 aerial photo was taken over by the Federal Government for use for the U.S Maritime Service's Officers Training Center. The "land" behind the Crab Cove jetty farther to the east was - even as late as the 1946 photo on page 182 - still just mud-islands and mud flats. . . .  

                            1946:

                           Closer-up. . .

Same goes for the 1948 topographic map - mud islands and mudflats:

             As seen close-up:

In 1954 The U.S. Maritime Service Officer School closed. The Training School had sent thousands of officers to sea either as third mates or third assistant engineers on our merchant supply-ships during and after World War II and the Korean War.  

Some of those fellows died in the wars, their ships torpedoed in the Pacific.  A memorial today stands in the middle of the field behind the Crab Cove Visitors Center:

Jumping to a 1959 map, the Crab Cove area I've marked in red:

A close-up shows it is labelled a "Maritime Reservation" and the muddy and sandy areas east and west of it still undeveloped . . .

By the mid-1960s the area at the far south end of Mckay Avenue and on the east side of McKay Avenue was under the control and direction of the California Department of Parks and Recreation and East Bay Regional Parks. . . .  
. . . .While the buildings and property lining the west side of the street remained part of the Federal Government, primarily in use today by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Crab Cove now gets "Top Billing" on the 'marquee' at the north end of that street:

And the Cove itself is out behind the Crab Cove Visitors Center, which is on the east side of Mckay. . . .

           But continuing from the 60s onward, here's an aerial photo of the Cove in 1965:

                                     Topo, 1973:

Close-up. Yep, that's the word MUD near the bottom right corner, and Ballena Bay, the marina to the west of Crab Cove has been built since that 1965 aerial photo:

                                 

An aerial close-up from 1982. Note the new housing tract - Crown Harbor - to the left-of-center (the two "jellybean shapes" on landfill built into the Bay during the late 1970s. . . . For comparison, go back and see the 1965 aerial photo). . . .

Same area today, looking west - Crown Harbor's townhomes abut the Federal property. . . .

                       Aerial, 1998:

Close-up. . . .  Sure looks more "citified" than only a few years ago. . .

And as it appears nowadays, looking east. . . . 

Some day the part of the above photo near McKay Avenue, where the big white Federal building in the lower-left corner of the above photo is, may look like this:

 

Or like this. . . . 

It may be that too many homes are being considered; the addition of residential housing could cause traffic problems on Mckay Avenue.  Currently, the traffic situation on that street is sometimes chaotic.  Click on the arrow at the middle of the photo to see a video about the traffic on Mckay:

Much of the area of the original parks - The Terrace Baths, Neptune Gardens and Neptune Park - utilized by the Federal Government to good purpose since the 1940s - is now employed for ecology education, recreation, picnics, and even outdoor concerts. . . .    An expansion of the existing park area wouldn't be such a bad thing.  Neither would an addition of a housing tract, but for the fact that it undoubtedly would - in the humble opinion of this out-of-towner and occasional visitor - add to the traffic congestion on Mckay Avenue. 

 

I've gathered the information to put this together from these main sources,

http://alamedainfo.com/

http://friendsofcrownbeach.com/

http://www.alamedamuseum.org/

http://www.usmm.org/alameda.html

http://www.ebparks.org/parks/vc/crab_cove

and

http://www.fedrealestate.gov/NeptunePointe/index.html ,

and I thank the folks who put those websites together for that information.