When you learn the landscape, something as subtle as a dip in the road can yield a story.

This view looks east down E. 10th Street, in near-East Oakland. The territory is what I call the Clinton terrace, a platform of sand and gravel, topped with clay, that accumulated around 125,000 years ago when the sea stood higher than today. There used to be a little stream here, a feature that stood out as American settlers moved into the area.

The land was originally part of the Ohlones’ homeland, lying on the shoreline of a large tidal inlet that later was named San Antonio Creek after becoming part of the Peralta land grant in 1820. Nothing much happened until 1850, when a small party of Americans landed at this spot and started farming on a large tract they leased, and later bought, from Antonio Peralta. In 1852 a bridge across San Antonio Slough (today’s Lake Merritt Channel) connected the area to the new town of Oakland, and everything sped up. In 1854 the tract became part of the township of Clinton, ready for subdivision, and a ten-acre plot on the shoreline was bought by Captain Jeremiah Nagle, who erected the second house in Clinton. In 1856 Clinton became part of the town of Brooklyn. This chart from that year shows the lay of the land.

^Source

Right above the “½” at bottom center is a little nick in the shoreline. That’s where Nagle’s plot and house was. The area, historian William Wood noted, was “much sought after on account of its salubrity and beauty of location,” and Nagle’s land included “a brook of the clearest water” that emptied into the creek. A detailed map from 1857 shows Nagle’s wedge of land, a headland with inlets on either side. It featured grassland and native trees, gentle slopes and a low bluff along the shoreline.

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Captain Thomas W. Badger acquired the Nagle property and house in 1861, retiring from the seagoing life at the age of 34.

Badger’s estate was an especially good piece of land, with plentiful water. The bluff was graded down to the shoreline and planted with a lawn and “trees and plants of almost every variety native to the soil and of the various tropical species.” Everything planted in the virgin soil exploded with vigor, a story repeated up and down California. (I suspect that the Ohlones favored this spot too, and like other early East Bay properties it may have held a small shellmound that enriched the soil as the colonizers turned its compost under.)

The Oakland Museum of California has a pair of interesting paintings of Badger’s property from the mid-1860s* you might categorize as celebratory documentation. With the museum’s permission I present images of them here, slightly optimized.

^{“Joseph Lee, Residence of Capt. Thomas W. Badger, Brooklyn, from the Northwest, ca 1871*. Oil on canvas, 26.25 x 42 in. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California. Gift of Lester M. Hale.” [1240 X 2000 px]}

^{“Joseph Lee, Residence of Capt. Thomas W. Badger, Brooklyn, from the South, ca 1871. Oil on canvas, 26 x 42 in. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California. Gift of Lester M. Hale.” [1236 X 2000 px]}

The images show the grounds and surroundings filled with emblems of beauty and prosperity. These include Larue’s steam ferry, inaugurated in 1857; the Oakland & San Francisco steam rail line, built in 1864 with the Clinton station right next door; and Badger’s own pier under construction. The paintings show the wetlands on either side of the property and the natural bluff overlooking the water at the property’s east end.

Shortly after these paintings were commissioned, Badger decided to share the estate with the public in the form of an amusement park. Badger’s Grand Central Park opened in April 1872 and was immediately popular. Besides the shady grounds and flower gardens it grew to include a 200 by 95 foot dance floor, a bowling alley, an amphitheater, a sailing pond, a restaurant and a menagerie. It was popular with ethnic and professional societies, and events drew as many as 20,000 people.

Captain Badger was a big part of its success, a regular participant who was fondly remembered.

^{1876 portrait (source)}

Badger’s Park lasted until 1889, through fires and depressions and anti-saloon activism. The 1878 map below shows the park as it existed then; apparently Badger had subdivided and sold off the east end of his land.

^Source

Here’s that land superimposed on today’s street map.

Besides the dip in E. 10th Street, that geological accident that started it all, the only sign left of Badger’s Park is a street that Badger privately established named Park Way.

There ought to be a plaque commemorating Badger’s Grand Central Park. It ought to go here, in the little green triangle at E. 10th and 9th Avenue.

The shoreline right of way pioneered by the railroad was widened by BART and the freeway and the city, each one eating away at the park and its landscape. Today what’s left of the site sits hard by a broad stampede of travelers, none of whom stop to play there any more.

But the new Brooklyn Basin apartment complex on the other side, built upon Oakland’s former 9th Avenue Terminal, has a public space, Township Commons, with trees and gardens and a dance floor even bigger than Badger’s pavilion.

Maybe another plaque to Captain Badger could go there.

More reading:

Mrs. Badger’s namesake ship returns unexpectedly, 1890

Farewell Badger’s Park, 1891

Mrs. Badger reminisces, 1891

Old-timer recalls Badger’s Park in 1922

Old-timer remembers Badger’s Park in 1945

*_{The paintings show the single track of the Oakland & San Francisco line, which was built in 1864 and ran down 7th Street. The Central Pacific built a second line slightly offshore from here in 1869 as part of the transcontinental railroad that followed today’s route down 1st Street. The absence of the second track puts the date of these paintings between 1864 and 1869.}

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