Vantage Point Park - Oakland

CC SA-BY by Andrew Alden

Vantage Point Park is a tiny park between three major streets in East Peralta. Its main feature, as you may guess from the name, is a single bench on a slight hill that looks south out over the railroad tracks, highway, estuary, and Alameda. I guess if you get bored you can go to the Burger King across the street or Pho Huynh Hiep kitty corner. It's worth noting that the Burger King is at the approximate location where the Peralta ranch did its slaughtering of cattle, though primarily for leather hides and tallow, not meat.

The park is the last remnant of the old Brooklyn landing, which began existence as the embarcadero for the San Antonio ranch during Mexican days. In the years just before the Gold Rush, commercial logging began in the Oakland hills and one route used to haul timber from the hills was down Park Boulevard to 13th Avenue, ending here at the mouth of 14th Avenue Creek. In 1847 the price of redwood lumber was $30 per thousand board feet, but in 1849 it was $350-$600 per thousand board feet. By 1860 the hills were completely logged. (Burgess, "The Forgotten Redwoods of the East Bay," California Historical Quarterly, vol. xxx no. 1.) Streetcar lines and railroads came past this place, one after the other, for the next few decades and erased all trace of the harbor. Now the park overlooks a bustling transportation corridor, including the lone palm tree from the former East Oakland Station.

The park was renovated in 2025 after a longstanding homeless encampment on E. 8th Street was removed, and now it is fairly clean.

1198 - 13th Avenue, Oakland, CA.

CC SA-BY Our OaklandCC SA-BY Our OaklandCC SA-BY Our Oakland