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Join us as we go for a stroll around Lake Merritt, the 3.4-mile tidal lagoon known today as the city’s jewel and wrapped by a necklace of lights.
The lake, which is named after a former mayor known as the “Father of Oakland,” has a storied history.
Before Horace Carpentier, the town’s first mayor, began illegally selling plots of land west of Market Street and quietly working to incorporate the area once known as Contra Costa in the 1850s, members of the Ohlone and Miwok tribes shared the space surrounding the lake with settlers. In the mid-1800s it was called the San Antonio Slough, then Lake Peralta, according to the nonprofit Lake Merritt Institute.
The lake formed at the mouth of several creeks and the center of marshlands as part of the San Francisco Bay. In 1868, Dr. Samuel Merritt, Oakland’s 13th mayor, proposed a dam be built to separate the slough from the bay, according to the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR). In 1869, Merritt donated 155 acres that included the headwaters of Indian Slough and money to build a dam at the 12th Street Bridge, across the “neck” of the inlet, according to the city’s website. This created the present-day lake, which became known as “Merritt’s Lake” and later as Lake Merritt. The doctor envisioned a place for residents to recreate and wildlife to take refuge. The California Legislature recognized this vision and, in 1870, established the Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge — the first wildlife sanctuary in North America.
Fast forward to 1925: Lake Merritt’s Necklace of Lights was lit for the first time during the Dons of Peralta Water Festival, shining nightly until blackout conditions during World War II were enforced starting in 1941. The 3,041 bulbs strung around the 126 main lamps circling the lake were reinstalled as part of a 10-year beautification campaign by the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club in the 1980s; on July 13, 1987, they were turned back on — the night before the MLB All-Star Game was hosted at the Oakland Coliseum.
Rumor has it the lake is home to a leviathan these days, which the executive director of the Lake Merritt Institute calls the Oakness Monster.
