Join Oakland Urban Paths for a different look at Old Oakland. Old Oakland is not just a collection of some of the oldest buildings in Oakland, but it shows examples of some of the significant changes that have occurred in Oakland since its founding in 1852.

This is a level walk, about 2.5 hours. As always, bring water, a hat, and sun protection as needed. (Hopefully Saturday the 10th will be cooler than today!)

…A long time ago, in a city budget far, far away, the City of Oakland had a free walking tours program. There were 8 walks, mostly around downtown, each 90 minutes long. Led by Annalee Allen, a group of volunteers led these tours. I led some of the tours in the past, including the Old Oakland tour. Saturday’s walk will have some overlap with that, but will be more focused on the examples of change that Old Oakland shows.

(Coincidentally, Ratto’s, pictured above, was the answer to one of the trivia questions at today’s celebration and awards of the 2nd annual diorama contest at the Oakland History Center at the Oakland Library.)

In any event, you can buy tickets here on Humanitix.

Thanks to everyone who came out for today’s walk with Scooter Marriner of @oaklandscenicwalkingtours, and special thanks to Scooter for leading us on an extended version of his Jack London Square and Produce District tour. If you didn’t make today, see Scooter’s page for info on his next JLS tour.

Scooter talked briefly about the 16th Street Station, and mentioned there will be an open house on Saturday, September 5th. Check the Oakland Heritage Alliance for more details in the coming weeks.

While we mostly talked about things that are still around, there were photos shared of a few things you can’t see any more, like what area around Oakland looked like back in 1857. You can see how small the new city of Oakland was, how much of the shoreline has been filled, and that Alameda wasn’t always an island.

And before the Produce District was set aside and specially zoned, there was the Oakland Produce Exchange. Given Oakland’s rapid growth at the time, it didn’t take long from its construction in 1903 before people realized it was on valuable real estate and nobody wanted to live too close to it. This 1910 photo shows how busy it was. (Special thanks to Tim Sanchez for the image.) You can read more about the Produce Exchange and other local topics on the Oakland Wiki.

The walk for September hasn’t been chosen yet, so if there’s an area of Oakland you’d like to explore and learn more about, let us know!

See you on the paths.

Join us for a walk around Jack London Square and the Produce and Warehouse district on Saturday, August 8. We’ll be led by Scooter Marriner of @oaklandscenicwalkingtours on an extended version of his Jack London’s Footsteps tour.

Scooter leads walking tours in Oakland and San Francisco, including tours at the Fox Theater and the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts (also known as the Oakland Auditorium).

There’s a variety of things to explore around Jack London Square, and more to learn about Jack London than his time spent at Heinold’s. Besides Jack London’s early life, we’ll discuss the historic produce district, the transcontinental railroads, and the Port of Oakland.

This is a level walk, about 2.5 hours. There are a variety of places to eat and drink after the tour.

The area is well-served by AC Transit, and parking is available nearby (but be sure the parking is long enough for the tour!)

The walk will begin at 10AM begins where Oakland began, at the foot of Broadway (under the palm trees, next to Scott’s)

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In addition to house museums like Camron-Stanford House and the Pardee Home Museum, and commercial buildings in Old Oakland, there are a surprising number of things left from Oakland’s early days. This walk will also explore Preservation Park, and view numerous Victorian residences that still stand. And maybe we’ll hear a Victorian ghost story or two.

We’ll talk about some of the people who lived and worked in the buildings and a bit about life in 1800s Oakland, and finish up in Old Oakland. The walk is about 2.2 miles with no stairs (sorry, stair lovers). Our end point is about 0.8 miles from the start. The start and finish are served by nearby AC Transit bus routes, and 12th Street BART is near the finish.

There are numerous restaurants a short walk from where we’ll finish, so consider staying for lunch after the walk and supporting local businesses.

Purchase tickets on Humanitix.

This walk was inspired in part by the need of the above house museums and others like the Dunsmuir-Hellman House and the Cohen-Bray House. They have long had a tenuous existence, but Camron-Stanford House was closed by the city and then suffered a fire, and the Dunsmuir-Hellman House (also owned by the city) has been suffering from lack of maintenance for many years.

Learn more about the need by listening to the East Bay Yesterday podcast episode, How to save a house, or read Liam’s SFGate article, Rare Bay Area Victorian mansion might need to ‘get rid of everything’.

Even if you can’t go on the walk, consider donating to support Camron-Stanford House reopening, or find out what you can do to support one of the house museums near you.

Thanks to everyone who came out for today’s walk about Cleveland Heights and Borax Smith. Special thanks to Coleen Noland of Walk Oakland Bike Oakland (WOBO), our parent organization, for helping out today.

We were also joined by Janet Byron, co-author of Berkeley Walks, who is working on an Oakland Walks book along with co-author Robert E. Johnson. Some of the walks in the upcoming book are based on OUP walks, as well as some Oakland Heritage Alliance (OHA) walks.

Speaking of OHA, if you found the parts of today’s walk about “Borax” Smith and Mary Smith, the Home for Friendless Girls, and Arbor Villa interesting, be sure to check out the OHA tour on Borax Smith.

Also mentioned was Andrew Alden’s Oakland Underfoot blog. Between signs overhead, sidewalk stamps underneath, and gnomes lurking on some of the utility poles, it pays to have your eyes open when walking around Oakland.

Anyway, thanks for coming out, for the interesting questions, and be thinking about where else in Oakland you’d like to do a walking tour. Send me an email @oaklandurbanpaths.org with your ideas.

See you on the paths!
Gene

P.S. If you have pictures from the walk to share, please send them along

Join Oakland Urban Paths on Saturday, March 14th to explore Cleveland Heights and the nearby former Borax Smith estate. This is a hilly walk, about 3 miles, and has multiple stairways. The walk takes about 2.5 hours, and there are no public restrooms along the route. The walk begins at 10:00AM. Wear good walking shoes, and bring hats and sunscreen as needed. Further details will be provided to ticket holders.

Purchase tickets on Humanitix.

After far too long, Oakland Urban Paths is coming back. It’s just me these days, so I’ll be starting small, and well, staying small for a while.

In the next couple of days, I’ll be creating a link for tickets, sending an email to the list, etc. as in the past.

One of the last walks we did before COVID shut things down was Cleveland Heights and Borax Smith. It’s also one of my favorites, so it seems fitting to start up things again with it.

So pencil in on your calendars Saturday, March 14, 2026 for an OUP walk!

Things are slowly re-opening around Oakland, and we’re working towards regular walking tours in the coming months. But we’ve been keeping busy. Working with the Friends of Hoover-Durant Public Library and the East Bay Yesterday podcast, we’ve created a new tour in West Oakland, with interviews with people in the neighborhood, historical photos, and more. You can get a taste of it in this short video:

As noted on the postcard, there’s a launch event for the tour coming up on June 19th. You can wait and take the tour on the day of the event, or take it on your own with the walking tour app, in person or virtually. Learn more about the event on the Black Liberation Walking Tour website, and hope to see you at the event!

Here it is, a year since the last in-person OUP walk. A lot has changed in the last year, but it’s still not possible to do in-person walks like we normally do.

In recognition of that, and in honor of Black History Month and Black Lives Matter, I’ve created a digital version of the Black History walk that we’ve led in previous years. You can either do it as a self-guided tour with your phone, or do it virtually from your computer.

As with the other digital walking tours we’ve published, the tour page gives some basics about the walk: the topic, where to start, how long the walk is, etc. When you’re ready to take the walk, either self-guided in the real world, or virtually from your computer, click on Start the tour and go from there.

The goals of Oakland Urban Paths are to teach people about Oakland, and to encourage them to explore Oakland (and elsewhere) on foot. So how do we do that under the current shelter in place order?

Even before COVID-19 was a thing, I’d been working on a side project. The schedules of walking tours and those who want to go on them sometimes conflict; people often ask (both about OUP walks and City of Oakland walks): “When will this walk be offered again? I can’t make the scheduled walk.” Too often the answer is: “next year” or “I don’t know.”

Another problem I’ve seen over the years is that some walking tours have largely disappeared from view. Two in particular are Once Upon a Time, Happily Ever After, and Walking the Invisible City. No fault of the creators, because it costs money for a website and time promoting it.

Then came COVID-19. Then came the Bay Area-wide shelter in place order. Then the state-wide shelter in place order. If you’re not in quarantine, you can (and should) still go out to get exercise, buy food, etc., but while minimizing opportunities for contamination. Some people are able to work from home, but many aren’t. And many people are scrambling to continue educating and entertaining their children.

So it seemed like this might be a good time to release the walking tour app as I have it so far. There are only 3 tours: Old Oakland (based on what I lead for the City of Oakland, though this is a bit longer), 10,000 Steps (based on Walking the Invisible City by Sue Mark and Bruce Douglas), and Once Upon A Time, Happily Ever After (based on Scott Oliver’s audio tour).

But I post what there is so far here as a way for you to keep exploring and learning about Oakland, even if you can’t have a live guide. Point your phone to https://walk.ouroakland.net, pick a tour, and go. Click Start the tour to begin, Directions to get directions to the stop, and Next to go to the next stop on the tour. Note that 10,000 Steps is in two parts and has audio at some stops, and Once Upon A Time… is in three parts, and is 99% audio. (The more audio, the more data it will use up on your phone.)

Please email gene @ oaklandurbanpaths.org to let me know if you take one of the tours, and let me know if you notice any problems with the tours or have any suggestions. See you (from at least 6′ away) on the paths!