Alameda Point Ferry Terminal Site Update
by Andy Fahrenwald

Our last newsletter featured articles on the rediscovery of the 1884
Alameda Point Ferry Terminal of the South Pacific Coast Railroad. We are
beginning to lay the groundwork to protect the site and investigate its
actual physical contents. Since our last report we have been working with
Lou Wall, the Navy's Cultural Resources Program Coordinator, to narrow
down the exact location of the Terminal and to see if the site has been
disturbed in any way since the 1902 fire. Lou has had a life-long
involvement in developing federal preservation policy and has been very
helpful. We have continued scouring the newspaper and corporate
documentary record for more exact information on the disposition of the
31 narrow gauge coaches, the principal object of our investigation. We've
met with unexploded ordnance experts from the Navy at Mare Island to
learn how remote sensing devices could help us locate and recover the
artifacts we believe are buried in the mud off Alameda Island. Finally, we
went out the site itself, gazed out over the Bay from the exact location of
the Terminal, and found what is apparently a narrowgauge railroad spike.

Lou Wall is conducting exhaustive research into the history of the
dredging and landfill at Alameda Naval Air Station. The Navy was quite
thorough in removing any pre-existing structures before filling the Bay.
This included removal of the piles and remains of the 1869 CP railroad
ferry pier, from which the transcontinental railroad first connected for a
brief period to San Francisco. Locomotive remains were found and
disposed of as iron scrap. All structures of the 1930s commercial airport
and seaplane port were completely removed as were the structures of the
Southern Pacific Ferry Terminal built adjacent to the 1884 Terminal site.
The good news is that so far no record has appeared of any disturbance the
terminal site; most of the 1884 SPCRR Ferry Terminal area lies just
offshore.

The conjectural schematic reconstruction shown on the next page is based
on newspaper accounts of the 1884 terminal construction, post-1902 fire
photographs and news reports, a USGS map of 1899, navigation charts
from the late nineteen hundreds to the present and a 1996 ærial
photograph. No accurate plan of the terminal in 1884 or prior to the 1902
fire has been located. Navigation charts show depths around 12 - 15 feet.
An early newspaper account gives a depth of 24 feet; there may have been
dredgingdone to accommodate deep water vessels delivering coal to the
SPCRR wharf bunker.

By 1902 the structure had been enlarged to include a several hundred foot
extension of the southern leg of the wharf and a freight railroad ferry slip
had been added to the north of the throat of the terminal. After the fire, the
freight slip was repaired and pressed into service and then another slip
was built on fill deposited in the gap between the Mole and the South Jetty.
This was the terminal used through the 1930s and buried under Alameda
Naval Air Station land fill in the 1970s.

The strings of coaches shown are approximately to scale - 16 standard
gauge coaches, 31 narrow gauge. We have very little evidence as to their

Navy Cooperation

Ferry Terminal at the time
of the 1902 fire

Samuel Knight Chapter SIA Newsletter

November 30, 1997

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