The Treaty also provided for the safeguarding of the land and property of Mexican citizens. American Acquisition Period Īs part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo following the Mexican–American War, the Mexican government ceded 525,000 square miles (1,360,000 km 2) 55% of its pre-war territory (excluding Texas) to the US in exchange for $15 million. Today's Redwood Regional Park is much smaller than the original forest, and is populated by much smaller redwoods. By 1860, the entire forest had been obliterated. By 1853 there were more men cutting redwoods than people living in any East Bay town. In 1850 the first steam-powered sawmill was erected within the forest, with three more mills added by 1852. Although the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that concluded the Mexican-American war had supported existing Mexican legal arrangements, The Peraltas lost control of the forest. For some, cutting trees could more reliably produce a fortune than hunting for ever more elusive gold. But the ensuing building boom increased lumber prices ten- to twenty-fold, and logging soon resumed. The start of the Gold Rush brought a brief lull to logging as loggers headed to the Sierras in search of gold.

Increasing numbers of adventurers arrived in the 1840s and began logging without regard to the Peralta family or the Mexican authorities. Logs would be hauled to the edge of San Francisco Bay, often by routes known today as Redwood Road and Park Boulevard, then shipped across the bay to a rapidly growing San Francisco. After an export market developed in the 1830's, cutting rose to levels that alarmed the Peralta family, who owned the forest but had permitted non-commercial exploitation by outsiders. Initially, small scale logging provided lumber to local ranches and missions. The forest was so prominent that ships entering San Francisco Bay would use it as a navigational landmark. Many of the redwoods were from 12 to 20 feet in diameter, and one was measured at 32 feet. A redwood forest of approximately five square miles spanned the Oakland hills, with some trees rising to 300 feet. The Peraltas called the area encinal, a Spanish word that means 'oak grove.' This was translated more loosely as 'Oakland' in the subsequent naming of the town, as recounted by Horace Carpentier in his first address as mayor: 'The chief ornament and attraction of this city consists, doubtless, in the magnificent grove of evergreen oaks which covers its present site and from which it takes both its former name of 'Encinal' and its present one of 'Oakland.'' The trees were California live oaks which are the dominant overstory plant of the coast live oak woodland habitat.Įxploitation of Oakland's old-growth redwoods played a major role in the city's early economic history.

The Peralta ranch included a stand of oak trees that stretched from the land that is today Oakland's downtown area to the adjacent part of Alameda, then a peninsula.

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