H26.1453

April 22, 1876
California
Gift of Col. Sheldon I. Kellogg, Jr.
H26.1453


Tickets of admission. Saturday April 22, 1876.. Tickets issued for 1st annual picnic of the University of Calif. Boat Club at Badger's Park, Brooklyn (now Oakland). (D. Cooper, 8/96) Thomas W. Badger in 1861, settled on an estate in Brooklyn (now a part of Oakland) and created Badger's Grand Central Park which opened to a crowd of 4,000 paying customers on April 14, 1872. A restaurant served East Bay oysters, beef, wine, and steam beer. Theater and opera productions filled a 3,000 seat pavillion. Exotic plants and animals thrived in a botanical garden and menagerie. Baseball games and trotting races brought the "cranks"--as sports fans were called--into the grandstands. But demands for expansion of the booming transportation industry soon required that Badger give up his land. By 1885, the scenic park was transformed to a tangle of railroad tracks and busy inner-harbor piers. From Steven Lavoie for the "Walk Along the Water" exhibition.
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