Page One

Ocean View’s first industries were the Pioneer Starch and Grist Mill, founded in 1855 by John Everding and A. Rammelsburg, and a lumber yard, founded in 1856 by Zimri Brewer Heywood and Captain James Jacobs. Jacobs and Heywood constructed the wharf in 1866. The wharf was located between Bristol (now Hearst) and Delaware streets. Freight was stored and shipped from the wharf and it also became a landing for a passenger steamer making four trips daily between Ocean View and San Francisco.  

After the University of California opened in 1873, a ferry service between Berkeley and San Francisco was established on a different pier owned by the Standard Soap Company. This pier was located at the foot of University Avenue. A horse-drawn streetcar service on University Avenue connected downtown with the new Berkeley ferry. This ferry had a short existence, however, and ceased operation in 1878. The Berkeley ferry service could not compete with the transcontinental railroad (which built a station at Third and Delaware streets in 1878 ) and with the branch railroad line on Shattuck Avenue established in 1876.These were faster routes to San Francisco by way of the Oakland ferry.  

Susan Cerny writes this series in conjunction with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association