The 2010 Census reflects the primary zip code (94619) for the neighborhood as having about 23,200 residents, with Caucasians making up about 29.9% of the population, African Americans 26.2%, Asians 22%, and Latinos 16.1%, with other races forming the remaining 5.8%.

The first non-native culture to touch this world were the Spanish-Californios whose vast land grant, Peralta, is the name of the creek that meanders under and through the streets on the west side of Redwood Road.

Working by hand, it took two men perched on a board wedged in a notch in the trunk a whole day of hacking away at one giant to send it crashing to the forest floor.

The loggers then stripped the redwood of its branches, prized for its resistance to rot and insects, and split it into boards by drilling holes and stuffing them with dynamite.

More valuable to the community, however, was the vision of a writer-poet born Cincinnatus Miller, who renamed himself Joaquin—after Joaquin Murieta, the "Mexican Robin Hood," hero to the Californios and the most famous outlaw of the Gold Rush.

Joaquin Miller, who donned a John Muir-like beard and boots, not only single-handedly planted on the clear-cut hills 70,000 trees—many of them the unfortunately flammable eucalyptus—but willed to the public trust after his death his vast land holdings, preserving for the generations the open space five minutes from our homes.

The park, threaded by walking trails that were probably first cut by loggers and horse ranchers, is a combination of Joaquin Miller's visionary industry.

The neighborhood known today as Redwood Heights began as a subdivision in the 1920s called Avenue Terrace (the official name of Jordan Park).

The Oakland Tribune of the day extolled its "beautifully wooded hillsides...the pleasure in hiking and riding horseback...excellent climate...and...marine view."

On today's Redwood Heights Elementary School site, Mr. DuBois owned a nursery where he grew cut flowers to sell to local florists.

The removal in the 1950s of Oakland's streetcar lines (known as the Key System), the resulting dominance of car culture, the swiftness of transportation, and the increased density of housing stock have all dramatically changed the ecology and sociology of Redwood Heights.

They fought the proposals for putting in their place apartment houses and multi-unit low-income housing—in favor of the small, neatly kept single-family homes which, ironically, for people who believed that "improvement" meant low-ethnic-diversity, immediately welcomed a host of new immigrant families whose contributions have helped make Redwood Heights the culturally intriguing place it is today.