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.