On May 17, 1852, thirteen days after Oakland was incorporated, the board of trustees who governed the city granted Carpentier rights to the entire waterfront for a period of 37 years (soon amended to "in fee simple forever"), in exchange for $5 and the building of three wharves and one schoolhouse.

Besides ownership of the waterfront, Carpentier also built up a ferry monopoly and a toll bridge across present day Lake Merritt, so that "he and his associates were collecting a fee on virtually every passenger, animal, or item of cargo that entered or left Oakland.

[citation needed] In 1852 he was elected to the State Assembly in what was generally viewed as a highly fraudulent victory, but in the legislature he pushed for the creation of Alameda County and/or Oakland's incorporation as a city in 1854.

He lived at a "sumptuous estate"[citation needed] at Third and Alice Streets (the latter was named after his only sister): Although reviled as the man who tied up Oakland's waterfront for personal gain for the entire 19th century, Carpentier was also fully committed to the development of the new city, and he delivered a far-sighted inaugural address calling for, among other goals, Oakland becoming the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad (fifteen years before this goal was accomplished), and for strict preservation of the city's native oaks.

"[citation needed] Carpentier, who lived with several servants and his collie dog for many years before his death, was also a trustee and benefactor to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

as "obviously a man of immense energy, who in his unorthodox and often ruthless tactics had become a land baron of great significance...he was held in both contempt and esteem at the time of his death..."[citation needed] in 1877 the Oakland Daily Transcript wrote, "If the early settlers had taken Horace Carpentier to a convenient tree and hung him, as they frequently threatened to do, the act would have been inestimably beneficial to immediate posterity.

as "one of the most cultivated men who ever filled the office of chief magistrate of this city,"[citation needed] Williams will probably always be best remembered as the stepfather of the writer Bret Harte.

[citation needed] He returned to the East in 1868 and did not come back to California until 1873, the year he was nominated for the State Senate by the Independent Convention and elected by a "handsome majority.

He had constructed more than one hundred buildings in Oakland, "mostly from his own designs, and all erected with his capital",[citation needed] including the legendary Grand Central Hotel on Twelfth Street, which burned to the ground in 1880.

A lifelong bachelor, he returned often to Maine to tend to his family there, and he died on August 17, 1890, at his Oakland home in the company of his widowed sister and Chinese valet.

"In religious matters he has inherited the Unitarian principles professed by his parents, and he has been an earnest member of the Independent Church of Oakland, where he has been a director and president of the society during many years.

188 and grand high priest of the California royal arch masons, he died on October 8, 1903, in New Britain, Connecticut, but he remains today at Mountain View.

When not engaged in civic affairs, Pardee was also a nationally renowned marksman, an ardent Mason, and a co-founder of both the First Unitarian Church of Oakland and the Athenian Club, which he served as its first president.

Like his father, the Pardee fils faced major labor unrest, including striking railroad workers seizing trains, marines being called in from Mare Island to quell riots, and hundreds of "Coxey's Army" adherents being herded into box cars and shipped to Sacramento, an incident which earned the mayor the epithet of "pick-handle Pardee" for his alleged use of such an instrument against the strikers – an allegation which he always angrily denied.

Pardee went on to be elected governor of California in 1902, defeating his Democratic opponent, Franklin Lane, a fellow alumnus of Oakland High, by only the narrowest of margins.

In the late 1880s, he moved to Oakland, where he and his family settled on a "small ranch at what is now 33rd and West Streets – ten acres, good house, barn, and outhouses.

"[citation needed] Here he opened a hay, coal, and feed business on Washington Street, as well as a bookstore next door, where he enjoyed the company of the city's literati.

In 1895 Davie ran for the mayor's office as a Populist, as he had two years earlier in his defeat by Pardee, but this time he drew 4,543 votes to 3,861 for J. Nelson, the "fusion" nominee of the Citizens' Municipal League, the Democrats, and the Republicans.

Snow's life came to an extremely bizarre end on the night of March 27, 1912, when he and Adolph Goldman, a San Francisco clothing merchant, murdered each other in the sanctuary of the First Congregational Church at Clay and Thirteenth Streets.

For some two weeks before the tragedy, the former mayor had been living under an assumed name at the Merritt Hotel at Ninth and Franklin Streets, and had been exchanging letters threatening murder with Goldman.

When the detective learned that Snow regularly attended the Congregational Church, which he had once served as president of its trustees, it was only a matter of time before the fatal attack occurred.

Snow and Goldman had first met in 1900, when the former was mayor and the latter, a native of Constantinople and a new arrival in Oakland from New York, owned a clothing store on Washington St. between Eighth and Ninth Streets.

Olney was also an avid hiker and fisherman, who was familiar with the Sierra and Coastal mountains even before he met John Muir in 1889 through their mutual friend, William Keith, the eminent landscape painter.

Following the adoption of a new city charter establishing a commission form of government in 1910, Mott won the 1911 election by defeating Socialist opponent Thomas Booth 11,722 to 9,837.

The massive harbor improvements which immediately followed were just part of an unprecedented era of public works projects, including the dredging of Lake Merritt, the building of the current City Hall and the Civic Auditorium (now known as the Kaiser Convention Center), establishment of the pioneering Oakland Public Museum in the Josiah Stanford (now Camron-Stanford) House, and vast expansion and improvements to sewers, streets, lighting, electricity, fire and police protection, etc.

A Republican and Catholic (St. Pascal's Church), Houlihan and his wife and four children lived at 4994 Stacy Street (near Joseph Knowland State Arboretum and Park) while he was mayor.

During Wilson's tenure as mayor, he appointed the first two African American women to serve on the powerful Oakland Board of Port Commissioners, Christine Scotlan and Carole Ward Allen.

He was praised both as a "man drafted to oversee the removal of Oakland's old Republican guard and the rise of African-American politics and politicians" and as a jurist and civic leader who embodied fairness to all of the city's communities.

He served in Congress, representing Berkeley, neighboring cities and part of Oakland, from 1971 until his resignation in February 1998, becoming Chairman of the House Committees on the District of Columbia (1979–1993), and Armed Services (1993–1995).

Dellums became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War immediately after his arrival in Washington, and in later years he became equally well known on the national stage for his fundamental challenges to the domestic priorities and international initiatives of successive presidential administrations.