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The town originally was called Ravenswood, then became East Palo Alto, and was nearly renamed Nairobi in 1968. It has also been known, informally, as Cooley's Landing, Weeks Poultry Colony, Runnymede and Palo Alto. It has been part of the larger areas of Rancho de las Pulgas, San Francisco County, San Mateo County and Menlo Park. Various districts, sometimes considered to be communities in themselves, were known as University Village, Palo Alto Gardens, Newbridge Park, Woodland Place, Palo Alto Park, Belle Haven, Bayshore Park, and others. The city is often mistakenly thought to be part of Palo Alto, although the two have always been separate entities.
For most of its history, East Palo Alto was part of unincorporated San Mateo County. As such, it did not have an official boundary until it incorporated in 1983. However, the area historically regarded as East Palo Alto was much larger than the city's current 2.5 square miles. (See map.) Large tracts were annexed by Menlo Park and Palo Alto from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.
The original inhabitants were Ohlone/Costanoan Native Americans. Spanish ranchers took over, followed by Caucasian speculators and settlers. For a time Chinese laborers were prevalent. Asian and Italian flower growers preceded the flood of middle-class Caucasians drawn to post-war housing developments. East Palo Alto later became the largest African American community on the peninsula. Today the city possesses a multi-ethnic population which includes a large number of Hispanics and Pacific Islanders.
Trade has alternately focused on ranching, transportation and shipping, brick manufacturing, farming, servicing travelers of Bayshore Highway and Dumbarton Bridge, and flower growing. At present there is a mix of small industrial, agricultural and commercial businesses.
These changes, and the population shifts that accompanied them, may be partially responsible for the notion that East Palo Alto lacks the kind of strong community identity possessed by its neighbors. Since it was founded around 1849, the town has experienced erratic growth and frequent conflict. Over the decades there has been rancor over lifestyles, schools, name changes, annexation, racial issues, incorporation, politics and development.
But some things have remained constant, namely the characteristics that have always attracted people to the area: the price of land and housing; a beautiful, rural-like setting; its centralized location; proximity to transportation and San Francisco Bay; and some of the most enviable weather in the nation.
The earliest people to live in the area were the Ohlone, also called the Costanoan, Indians. Bands of this tribe populated present-day California from the Golden Gate to Big Sur some 3,000 to 3,500 years ago. They lived in huts made of grass and were a peaceful society of hunters and gatherers, until they were virtually wiped out in the late 1700s by European diseases and attempts to change their religion and lifestyle.
A burial mound was uncovered in 1951 during development of the University Village subdivision (see map), near today's aptly named Costaño School. After a year-long excavation and examination of 60 graves and 3,000 artifacts, researchers concluded Native Americans had used the area as a cemetery and occasional camp site, rather than as a permanent settlement. In later years another mound was found near Willow Road and the railroad tracks.
Rancho de las Pulgas extended from present-day San Mateo to Palo Alto. Since the first European soldiers and missionaries arrived more than 200 years ago, the area has been claimed by Spain, the Catholic Church, Mexico, the Arguello family, the United States, and numerous squatters who took advantage of its uncertain ownership. After years of legal wrangling which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, title was awarded to the heirs of Luis Antonio Arguello, the first native governor of California. The victory was bittersweet, for the family was forced to sell much of the land to pay legal bills.
Legend has it that Rancho de las Pulgas (meaning Flea Ranch) derived its name from a passing band of Spanish soldiers who attempted to camp in some abandoned Ohlone huts. They promptly changed their minds and rapidly retreated, complaining loudly as they tried to fend off "las pulgas."
In 1848, a peace treaty was signed with Mexico, and California became part of the United States. The Gold Rush in 1849 influenced the area in several ways. It hastened statehood the following year and drew speculators to the peninsula. One of these was Isaiah Woods, who founded the town today known as East Palo Alto.
Around 1849 Isaiah Woods convinced his partners in the Adams and Company bank to invest in a town and wharf at the end of Bay Road. They founded Ravenswood, reportedly named for Woods and the crows that nested nearby. Subdivisions were laid out, and it became the first planned community in what later became San Mateo County (the area was part of San Francisco County until 1856).
A wooden pier was built at present-day Cooley's Landing. The only port between San Francisco and the (then) state capitol of San Jose, it was used for both passengers and cargo. A few buildings - said to include a store, school, shacks, hotels and saloons - sprang up nearby. Woods confidently predicted Ravenswood would become a hub of commerce second only to San Francisco.
Woods had good reason to speculate. At that time the most convenient way to travel down the peninsula was by steamer from San Francisco to the new "Port of Ravenswood," where passengers took a stage coach to San Jose. The Central Pacific Railroad had plans to span the bay and build the westernmost stop of its "ocean to ocean" line in the little town. A San Francisco-San Jose track was proposed, with Ravenswood being one of its four stops. And the wharf was kept busy with lumber, hay and dairy shipments to San Francisco.
In 1853, the U.S. Coast Survey, as part of its survey of San Francisco Bay, erected a sandstone pillar near the present-day intersection of Gonzaga and Notre Dame streets. For nearly 100 years it marked the east end of the Pulgas Base, used to determine property boundaries. The monument was moved in 1951 and now sits at the north end of Jack Farrell Park.
Woods' plans for Ravenswood were short-lived. A number of factors combined to spell the doom of the promising port community. Oakland became the western terminus for the railroad, the trans-bay track was not laid until 60 years later, and the San Francisco-San Jose line was delayed and later bypassed the town. The state capital relocated to Sacramento. Redwood City replaced Ravenswood as the major lumber port on the peninsula. A gold mining slump threw San Francisco into a depression, and Woods' San Francisco bank failed in 1855. Legend has it Woods returned to his Woodside Mansion with embezzled funds and, after being forced at gun point to return $80,000 to an irate investor, left the country.
Ravenswood became a ghost town. A half-interest in the port which sold for $4,000 in the 1850s went for $150 20 years later. By 1870 only foundations and the wharf remained of the original town. Like other parts of San Mateo County, Ravenswood became a destination for picnickers and a weekend country retreat for San Francisco residents.
In 1868 successful gold miner and dairyman Lester Cooley bought the Ravenswood wharf and more than 400 acres of bay-front property which stretched from present-day University Avenue to Embarcadero Road. He made extensive repairs to the pier, which became known as Cooley's Landing and was used primarily for shipping grain and products from the dairy he established.
But Ravenswood did not see a significant revival until 1874, when Cooley leased five acres to Hunter, Shackleford and Company. The firm built a brick factory where Jack Farrell Park is today. That same year Ravenswood became part of Menlo Park when it incorporated. Cooley was the second mayor and served until the city was disincorporated. (When Menlo Park reincorporated in 1927 its boundaries did not extend beyond Middlefield Road.)
The brick factory operated seven kilns, employed up to 100 Chinese laborers, and made as many as 50,000 bricks a day. These were shipped from Cooley's Landing to San Francisco to build the Palace Hotel. The plant's clay pit is still evident in the bowl-shaped contours of the park.
Business looked so promising that a second wharf, Clarke's Landing, was built to the southeast. In later years it became the Palo Alto Yacht Harbor.
But once the hotel was complete business steadily declined, and the factory closed after 10 years. Cooley had died two years earlier during removal of a four-pound cancerous tumor. Ravenswood was abandoned once more, and the Cooleys, Carnduffs and Kavanaughs became the area's only permanent residents.
A few noteworthy events occurred in the early 1900s. The Kavanaughs' farmhouse on Bay Road, currently used by the Community Law Project, was built around 1906. It is the oldest known structure in East Palo Alto today.
Southern Pacific Railroad finally built the first track to span the bay in 1910. For the first time, passengers could travel from the east bay to the peninsula without going through Santa Clara County. But the new line had little impact on the local economy. A cutlery manufacturer, Rodgers and Rodgers, operated briefly but unprofitably in the early 1900s.
In 1917 U.S. involvement in World War I instigated construction of a 100-acre military training center on Willow Road. More than 40,000 men passed through Camp Fremont. There were expansion plans for an officer's training school until the Armistice was signed in 1918. Later the camp was razed and its base hospital turned into a medical facility for veterans.
A few years earlier, Charles Weeks came to Ravenswood with a dream which continues to shape East Palo Alto today . . .
Charles Weeks was a visionary. He believed in applying scientific principals to farming and devised a poultry-raising method which concentrated birds in coops instead of allowing them to roam. In 1916 he founded Runnymede, also known as the Weeks Poultry Colony, in Ravenswood (see map).
Weeks named Runnymede after the meadow where the Magna Charta, which guaranteed basic rights for Englishmen, was granted. His utopian agricultural experiment was based on the concept that small farmers could support themselves on one intensively cultivated acre, thereby achieving independence and a quality of life superior to that in industrialized cities.
"One Acre and Independence" was Weeks' heavily promoted motto. Within 18 months it drew 60 families who paid cash for one- or five-acre plots. By 1922 Runnymede had 400 families raising chickens, rabbits, goats, fruits and vegetables on more than 640 acres in the heart of present-day East Palo Alto. School attendance grew from a handful of students to more than 300.
Runnymede consisted of long, narrow lots with single-story "garden homes," poultry coops which housed up to 2,500 birds, and two-story tankhouses which provided water. The community had a cooperative warehouse, store, marketing services, cannery and tannery, clubhouse (which still stands at Clarke and Weeks streets), school and park.
Ravenswood's population peaked at about 1,000 by the mid-1920s. But relations between the poultry colonists and their neighbors were strained. There was a squabble over renaming the school district Runnymede. By 1925 it had escalated into a feud over whether the town should be called Ravenswood or Runnymede. In an informal December election the compromise choice of East Palo Alto won. (At the time it was thought that Palo Alto would annex the area, but although legislation was proposed, it was never acted upon.)
But unity was not achieved. The two communities continued to have separate chambers of commerce and were generally considered individual municipalities.
In a few years what was believed to be the largest poultry colony in the nation began to decline. By the 1930s several factors had combined to bring an end to this era in East Palo Alto history. Many of the one-acre farms eventually gave way to housing tracts. However, unlike most such colonies established on the West Coast in those years, numerous Runnymede-era structures and lots endure today.
At the same time, the wharf began to decay and Cooley's Landing became a county dump. By the late 1940s the port and Ravenswood's 19th-century buildings had disappeared.
As an unincorporated area, East Palo Alto was governed by the county. Residents complained they had no say in decisions that affected them, so in 1966 county supervisors established the East Palo Alto Municipal Council. Although it was an advisory body, the county nearly always followed its recommendations. The council was made up of one representative from each of five districts, but members were elected by all voters.
"To our knowledge, this is the first program of this nature in the United States," San Mateo Legal Aid official Bruce Bailey was quoted in The Review of the News in 1968. "East Palo Alto is an ideal community for this experiment in incorporation and self-government of a minority area."
The Council began meeting in a storefront in the University Village Shopping Center, found new chambers on Pulgas Avenue in 1971, then moved into the county government center in 1975. Among those to serve was Willia Gray, later honored as the nation's first black woman mayor.
In 1968 there was an election to rename East Palo Alto. Several alternatives were considered, including Uhuru and Kenyatta, before Nairobi was settled upon. The measure was defeated more than 2 to 1. At the time, the greatest support for the name change came from the 18-to-21 age group. It was believed that if the voting age had been 18 at that time, East Palo Alto would be known as Nairobi today.
One of the frustrations of unincorporation was the number of special districts to which residents paid taxes for such services as drainage, fire protection, garbage, sanitation, lighting, recreation, water, education, etc. According to one source, East Palo Alto fell under the jurisdiction of 37 special districts in the mid-1960s. Consolidation of these districts and their services was one of the arguments used to support incorporation.
East Palo Alto's battle to achieve cityhood was a long and tumultuous one. Incorporation was proposed as early as 1931 and again four years later. The idea was revived in 1951. A study was done by the Ravenswood-Willow Boosters, which voted 38-29 against incorporation amid charges the meeting was packed with anti-city members.
In the fall of 1953 civic leaders formed a committee to study incorporation. The effort died in early 1954, following a near riot of 400 people at a meeting at Brentwood School. In the summer of 1958 residents living west of Bayshore attempted to incorporate themselves into a city to be called Woodland Oaks. At the same time an effort was made to incorporate the east side into Menlo Park. Both attempts failed. In 1981 the area west of Bayshore again applied for annexation to Menlo Park and was denied.
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