H96.1.842

Handwritten on the back of the photo, "Creek Route Ferry coming into Broadway slip." Photo shows a steam powered ferry with two men standing on its lower deck. A flag is waving in the wind next to the steam stack. Tall masted ships in the background. From "San Francisco Bay Ferryboats" by George H. Harlan: "The Creek Route, up what is now the Oakland Estuary, had been hazardous in 1850 when Captain Thomas Gray and his 'Kangaroo' offered the first ferry service between San Francisco and Oakland. By 1876 the channel was better and the Central Pacific was operating a ferry from the foot of Broadway in Oakland, down the Creek and across the Bay to the Ferry Building. business on this route was enlivened in 1893 when John L. Davie challenged the Southern Pacific ferry with his parallel and competing Nickel Ferry. While the Nickel Ferry was a short-lived business, it forced the S.P. to adopt the five-cent passenger fare on this route which lasted over forty years and was a great boon to unemployed job-seekers during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Creek Route was the site of the pioneer auto ferry on the Bay, accepting the horseless carriage on a published tariff basis as early as 1908."--page 23.

Used: Oakland Tribune