Went for a little ride today and ended up at the cemetery a few blocks from my house. It was a stellar fall day here in the Bay Area. Clear blue skies and about 68 degrees. The sun was going down and figured it would be a good time to drag the camera out... This cemetery was established in 1863. Lots of locally famous people are buried here like the Big Four railroad folks, the Ghirardellis, Bechtels, Crockers, Henry J. Kaiser, Julia Morgan, Glenn Burke...the list goes on and on. It is one of the most beautiful places in Oakland... These roads and paths would be great fun to really ride on if it weren't for those persnickety security people... Those are gazillion-dollar homes in the hills there. And, yes, this is Oakland. Probably not what comes to mind for most folks when thinking of my fair city... This guy is lonely, but he has Mt. Tamalpais in the background to watch over him... These stones are in a somewhat forgotten area of the cemetery. It was used as a dump many years ago and I've found a few old bottles here, some with the names of bygone Oakland business stamped into the glass... This is a view of my daily commute. Sure looks pretty and serene from up here, doesn't it? Heh... The Richmond-San Rafael Bridge... I wish my bike had been clean and hadn't had the pannier protectors on it, but oh well... More on the way... WoodsChick
This area is called Millionaire's Row. That's Samuel Merritt's pad behind my 610, the monolith on the right is for the Crockers. Downtown Oakland is in the background... A better view of downtown Oakland. You can almost see my house from here... Everything in this photo is granite. The level of detail in the craftmanship always blows me away. I can't even begin to imagine what something like this would cost today... Here's a photo I took if the undersides of the columns on a rainy day last spring... I love this angel, she's about 6' tall... Nice mosaic work, but the moss is winning... Cranes at the Port of Oakland... I took one last shot and headed home... What a great day! WoodsChick
Scenic cemetaries by Woodschick. We don't have any nice fancy graveyards around here. I'd probably just take a picture of my favorite sign at the local one that reads "NO EXIT". Duh!
Nice. We should do a short tour of the bay area. I could do a few things on some of the slower roads on my bike. In fact if others wanted to put up pics of their areas then we would get to know each other a bit better.
Thanks, AndrewS That's funny! I really like old graveyards for some reason. This one is getting spiffed up and I'm not all that happy about it. There are tons of old crumbling walkways and stuff and I really like the feel of it. I don't want it to look new Thanks, Phoenix! I love Oakland, been here more than half my life, and there's a lot to be proud of here. Unfortunately all anyone ever hears about it is the bad stuff. It's a really cool place Well, funny you should mention that. I first started taking pictures of my bike, but I'm always drawn to the cemetery itself so I turned my camera towards my surroundings. As I went along, I started thinking about seeing Oakland through the eyes of someone that had never been here. It's beautiful here...the whole Bay Area is beautiful, really. Some people's only exposure to Oakland consists of a visit to the Coliseum which is a horrendous representation of the city. It's just so much more...and I wanted to share a little bit of that. I guess I should have put this in the Diner since it wasn't totally about the ride.... Glad y'all enjoyed it, though WoodsChick
Epic......graveyard ? Tell me something Woodsy, does everything that you do have to be epic ??? You don’t do like....regular stuff either now and then ? Kidding Woodsy Awesome, awesome pictures, looks like a nice place to “rest a bit” Eagerly awaiting your next adventure EpicChick
What can i say WC ----You have such a way with your ride reports and the composition of your photo's --sure you could have raised the dead with that shoot as usual --Awesome
Cool shots as usual. Spent some time helping a guy get an old cemetary here looking spiffy for a new crop of stiff's. Has some really neat old markers and family plots from more than a 100 years ago with the new generations still in the area. I want to do some riding in No Cal when I head south. I am coming down through Boise, Winnemucca, and then who knows.
Thanks! I really enjoy posting them I thought this was regular stuff Seriously, I thought "Well, it was a short ride, I'm only a few blocks from home, my bike's dirty...is this even worthy of a mention?" but I love the place and thhought I would share. Glad you got a kick out of it, Muddy Thanks, Blazes! I only have a little point-and-shoot camera and I don't know anything about photography. I'd like to learn and get a fancier camera, but I don't have the patience for that stuff. Besides, I crash too much to carry an expensive camera with me when dirtriding WoodsChick
Yeah, I've been to a ton of cemeteries before and this one is the prettiest one I've ever seen...certainly the most grand in scale. I was in LA for a supercross race once and decided to go see that fancy cemetery where all the stars and famous people were buried. It was a huge disappointment Well, I think so I'm sure it will erode and get weathered just like the raw granite in the Sierra range, but I'm sure it'll last a lot longer than me and you Some of these things were carved in the early 1800's and they look just as sharp and beautiful as they did when they were new. WoodsChick
I'm glad I said "locally" famous, otherwise I'd be embarrassed! Kaiser was the Kaiser of Kaiser Steel and Aluminum. He built Hoover Dam (along with Bechtel) and the Liberty ships in WWII. The Kaiser Shipyards were very instrumental in shaping the face of the Bay Area. He did build a car, and he is the namesake of Kaiser Hospitals. Glenn Burke was a professionl baseball player from Berkeley. He was gay, and after openly dating Tommy Lasorda's son the Dodgers offered him $75,000 to get married to a woman...any woman. He refused and got traded to the A's. When Billy Martin found out he was gay he sent him to the minors so he quit. Julia Morgan was a very prolific architect (Hearst Castle, among others) at a time when women just weren't architects. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in engineering in 1902, and became the first female architect in CA in 1904. Bernard Maybeck, another famous architect buried here, was her geometry teacher at UC Berkeley. Bechtel is the largest engineering firm in the US. They do stuff like airports, dams, the Big Dig in Boston, power plants, all kinds of stuff all over the world. They had shipyards here, too, and built lots of cargo ships and oil tankers and stuff. They've had their hands in all kinds of monster project cookie jars over the years. Crocker was one of the Big Four (Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Huntington) that began the Central Pacific Railroad, the western portion of the first Transcontinental Railroad in the US. He also started Crocker Bank, which was bought by Wells Fargo years ago. Ghirardelli = Ghirardelli Chocolate...need I say more? The cemetery was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the same guy that designed Central Park in NY and the Capitol grounds in DC. He also did the campuses at UC Berkeley, Stanford, OSU in Corvallis, OR and tons of others. Ok, so now you all know waaay more than you ever wanted to know about the cemetery at the end of my street HistorianChick
Whoa! When are you coming?? Let me know ASAP and we'll figure out a way to hook up somewhere. WoodsChick
Good grief, now I see why that boneyard is so significant. I would be disappointed to see it "upgraded" too with all that history laying there, so to speak
