A history of Berkeley,
since 1866
Postcards, papers and photographs of Berkeley from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The site of today's City of Berkeley was the territory of the Chochenyo/Huchiun Ohlone people when the first Europeans arrived. Evidence of their existence in the area include pits in rock formations, which they used to grind acorns, wildflower seeds, grass seeds, and many different foods, including squirrel fat, and a shellmound, now mostly leveled and covered up, along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay at the mouth of Strawberry Creek. Human remains and skeletons from Native American burials have been unearthed in West Berkeley and on campus alongside Strawberry Creek. Other artifacts were discovered in the 1950s in the downtown area during remodeling of a commercial building, near the upper course of the creek.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Berkeley’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewHorses Grazing, 1875: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Berkeley, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Horses Grazing (1875) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Historic places
National Register · via Wikidata
From Wikimedia Commons (1), the Library of Congress (6) and the National Register (4). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.