37°53′44″N122°16′46″W / 37.89556°N 122.27944°W
Thousand Oaks is a neighborhood of Berkeley in Alameda County, California. Located at the base of the Berkeley Hills, it lies at an elevation of 239 feet (73 m). [1]
The principal shopping area is Solano Avenue, along the southern edge of the neighborhood. There are also two smaller clusters of shops on the northern edge of Thousand Oaks, across the county line in Kensington on Arlington Avenue and on Colusa Avenue. The neighborhood is primarily residential, mostly consisting of single-family houses built in the early 20th century, sometimes with in-law apartments, as well as a handful of apartment buildings.
When the neighboring city of Albany was incorporated in 1908, its borders were drawn to exclude the area north of Solano Avenue and east of Curtis Street that would become the Thousand Oaks area, then the site of a refugee camp that had formed after the 1906 earthquake. [2] Its residents were employed in the construction of the surrounding subdivisions and were likely to vote against incorporation as a separate city. The neighborhood was first subdivided in 1909 and 1917 after a failed proposal to move the state capital to Berkeley, in which the area would have become a large public park near the capitol building. [3] Originally an unincorporated area north of Berkeley, it was built as a commuter suburb at the northern terminus of three interurban rail lines. [4] [5] It includes the Thousand Oaks Knoll, a rocky extension of the Berkeley hills in the northeastern part of the neighborhood. Several large rock outcroppings in the eastern edge of the neighborhood were turned into public parks, or incorporated into private yards.
Berkeley is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321.
Albany is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northwestern Alameda County, California, United States. The population was 20,271 at the 2020 census.
The Key System was a privately owned company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany, and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from 1903 until 1960, when it was sold to a newly formed public agency, AC Transit. The Key System consisted of local streetcar and bus lines in the East Bay, and commuter rail and bus lines connecting the East Bay to San Francisco by a ferry pier on San Francisco Bay, later via the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. At its height during the 1940s, the Key System had over 66 miles (106 km) of track. The local streetcars were discontinued in 1948 and the commuter trains to San Francisco were discontinued in 1958. The Key System's territory is today served by BART and AC Transit bus service.
The East Bay is the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area and includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. With a population of roughly 2.8 million in 2024, it is the most populous subregion in the Bay Area, containing the second- and third-most populous Bay Area counties of Alameda and Contra Costa.
Rockridge is a residential neighborhood and commercial district in Oakland, California. Rockridge is generally defined as the area east of Telegraph Avenue, south of the Berkeley city limits, west of the Oakland hills and north of the intersection of Pleasant Valley Avenue/51st Street and Broadway. Rockridge was listed by Money Magazine in 2002 as one of the "best places to live".
Solano Avenue in Berkeley and Albany, California is a two-mile (3.2 km) long east-west street. Solano Avenue is one of the larger shopping districts in the Berkeley area. Businesses along Solano Avenue cover a wide range, including grocery stores, coffee shops, drugstores, bookstores, antique dealers, apparel outlets, ethnic restaurants and a movie theater.
The Shipyard Railway was an electric commuter rail/interurban line that served workers at the Richmond Shipyards in Richmond, California, United States, during World War II. It was funded by the United States Maritime Commission and was built and operated by the Key System, which already operated similar lines in the East Bay. The line ran from a pair of stations on the Emeryville/Oakland border – where transfer could be made to other Key System lines – northwest through Emeryville, Berkeley, Albany, and Richmond to the shipyards. It operated partially on city streets and partially on a dedicated right-of-way paralleling the Southern Pacific Railroad mainline.
The East Bay Electric Lines were a unit of the Southern Pacific Railroad that operated electric interurban-type trains in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Beginning in 1862, the SP and its predecessors operated local steam-drawn ferry-train passenger service in the East Bay on an expanding system of lines, but in 1902 the Key System started a competing system of electric lines and ferries. The SP then drew up plans to expand and electrify its system of lines and this new service began in 1911. The trains served the cities of Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville, Oakland, Alameda, and San Leandro transporting commuters to and from the large Oakland Pier and SP Alameda Pier. A fleet of ferry boats ran between these piers and the docks of the Ferry Building on the San Francisco Embarcadero.
The Claremont district is a neighborhood straddling the city limits of Oakland and Berkeley in the East Bay section of the San Francisco Bay Area in California, United States. The main thoroughfares are Claremont and Ashby Avenues.
Westbrae is a neighborhood in the northern part of Berkeley, California in the East Bay section of the San Francisco Bay Area. Westbrae is "centered" on the intersection of Santa Fe Avenue and Gilman Street, although the main extent is east, south and west of this intersection, with the Albany city limit only a short distance north. It lies at an elevation of 79 feet. The neighborhood is mainly residential, with a small commercial section along Gilman from Santa Fe to Tevlin Street. In the past, businesses consisted of liquor and grocery stores but now are small restaurants, a natural food store, bakeries, and a nursery. The elevated tracks of the BART Richmond line cut diagonally across Westbrae, crossing over Gilman in the commercial section. There is a church formerly named the Westbrae Bible Church, now the Evangel Bible Church of Berkeley, located nearby on the corner of Hopkins and Ordway about three blocks from the center of the Westbrae neighborhood.
Downtown Berkeley is the central business district of the city of Berkeley, California, United States, around the intersection of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, and extending north to Hearst Avenue, south to Dwight Way, west to Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and east to Oxford Street. Downtown is the mass transit hub of Berkeley, with several AC Transit and UC Berkeley bus lines converging on the city's busiest BART station, as well as the location of Berkeley's civic center, high school, and Berkeley City College.
Richmond Heights, formerly East Richmond and also known as Mira Vista, is a district of eastern Richmond, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The 1923 Berkeley, California, fire was a conflagration that consumed some 640 structures, including 584 houses in the densely built neighborhoods north of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley, California, on September 17, 1923.
Downtown Oakland is the central business district of Oakland, California, United States. It is located roughly bounded by both the Oakland Estuary and Interstate 880 on the southwest, Interstate 980 on the northwest, Grand Avenue on the northeast, and Lake Merritt on the east.
The Northbrae Tunnel, also referred to as the Solano Avenue Tunnel, was built as a commuter electric railroad tunnel in the northern part of Berkeley, California, and was later converted to street use.
North Berkeley is a neighborhood of Berkeley, California. It is situated north of downtown, spanning from Hearst Avenue to Eunice Street, and touches the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus.
The Solano Avenue Stroll, also known as the Solano Stroll, is an annual street fair held on the second Sunday of September on the Solano Avenue shopping district of Albany and Berkeley, California. Stretching close to 2 miles long and bringing between 250,000 and 300,000 attendees in a single day, it has been called the oldest and largest street festival in the San Francisco Bay Area and the "world's biggest block party". In 2001, the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center in Washington, D.C. designated the festival as a "National Local Legacy".
Northbrae is a neighborhood in Berkeley, California built as part of the northern expansion of North Berkeley. Its technical border is Solano Avenue to the North, Spruce Street to the East, the Albany city limits to the West, and Hopkins Street, Yolo Avenue, and Eunice Street to the south. Northbrae however broadly refers to the upper half of North Berkeley starting at or around Rose Street but ending before Solano. It's bordered by the two commercial districts on Solano Avenue and Hopkins Street, as well as hilly terrain made up of volcanic rock, rhyolite, and 136 stairways carved into the landscape. The neighborhood is visibly distinct for its pink sidewalks and many stone pillars topped with concrete globes denoting street names. The central hub of Northbrae is the Fountain at the Circle, a water fountain designed by the head architect of the University of California surrounded by terra cotta roundabout and stairwell. Northbrae made it into the American Planning Association's list of Great Places in America in 2011.
The F is a bus service operated by AC Transit in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the operator's many transbay routes, which are intended to provide riders a long-distance service across the San Francisco Bay between the East Bay and San Francisco. The service is descendant of the foundational Key System streetcar and ferry line that operated prior to the formation of AC Transit.
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