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Oakland was founded in 1852. In 1906 its population grew substantially with refugees made homeless after the San Francisco earthquake and fire.
During WWII, the East Bay Area was home to a massive Naval shipbuilding industry. The industry attracted a huge amount of laborers from around the country. Many of the new workers were African Americans, who enjoyed great prosperity during the war years.
Soon after the war, the shipbuilding industry virtually evaporated as did the jobs that came with it. Many who came to the city did not leave and decided to settle in their new home of Oakland. Meanwhile, many of the city's more affluent residents fled the city after the war in order to move into newly developing suburbs to the north and south of Oakland's city borders.
Soon Oakland, which had been quite prosperous and affluent before the war, found itself with a population that was dominated by a lower income class than had been typical for the city. Much of Oakland's current reputation as a high-crime city can be traced to the transformation that occurred after World War II.
Oakland was home to many activist groups during the 1960s and 70s. The Black Panther Party is perhaps the most famous of the groups that formed in Oakland.
In the late 80s and early 90s Oakland was home to two major natural disasters.
On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake caused significant damage in Oakland, despite the fact that the epicenter of the quake was more than 70 miles (100 km) away from the city. The Cypress structure, a double decker portion of freeway that collapsed during the earthquake was in Oakland, and the portion of the San Francisco Bay Bridge that fell down was on the Oakland side of the span.
On October 20, 1991, the city was struck by the Oakland Hills firestorm. Due to an intense Diablo wind a small brush fire in the East Bay hills turned into an out of control wildfire that spread quickly across 1,600 acres (6 kmē) of the dense housing of Oakland and Berkeley's hills. 25 people were killed, 2,449 single family houses were burned down, 427 apartment and condo units destroyed and $1.5 billion in damage were accrued. The fire remains one of the most damaging fires in California history.
Jerry Brown, a former governor of California, known to some as "Governor Moonbeam," was elected mayor in 1998 and re-elected with little opposition in 2002. In March 2004, Oakland's voters approved Measure P, an affirmation of the so-called "strong mayor" system, which enshrined permanently changes in the city charter that had given the mayor chief executive power over city government rather than the city manager (as had been historically the case prior to Brown's election as mayor).* Travel guide to } from Wikitravel
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