I recently came upon this stamp after the word "bacon" caught my eye. I had noticed some of these impressions in the sidewalk before, but I'd never stopped to think much about them. Intrigued, I went home and did what any curious person would do. I Googled.
It turns out another Oakland resident also found the markers interesting – and started a whole blog about Oakland Sidewalk Stamps. Andrew Alden, a geology expert, documents images of the concrete etchings that mark when and who made the ground we walk on. He explains on his site that the stamps are "analogous to a coin collection of unique date-and-mint-mark combinations."
Digging a little deeper, I found that these markers also date back to the time when Oakland was a city of stone quarries. During the city's earliest days of development, builders used stones imported on ships to make sidewalks and streets, until they realized that the city had construction materials all around them. Eventually, several stone quarries opened all around the city – materials that were used for walkways, paths, and sidewalks.
One of these quarries was run by the Berkeley Rock Company, located at 468 11th Street, in Oakland's Bacon Block. This particular quarry produced about 250-yards per day of materials for concrete, macadam, and gutter rock from its trap-rock.
But what was up with the name Bacon Block? And where exactly was it located? There must be some interesting history there. More Googling led me to a 1902 San Francisco Call article about a fire that ravaged the Bacon Block, a structure bounded by Washington, Broadway, 11th, and 12th streets. The block, it turns out, wasn't named after tasty smoked pork products as I had hoped, but Henry D. Bacon, a prominent "pioneer capitalist" in Oakland, whose family converted the building into offices around 1900, including the family's Bacon Land and Loan Company. Before it was the "Bacon Block," the building had a storied history. The once wooden structure housed the Cavalry Hall, as well as a drill hall for the Oakland Guard, a theater, and even barracks for the Salvation Army.
After the destructive fire, the Bacon Block was rebuilt and once again housed offices, including the San Francisco Call. Yep, the former newspaper (of Mark Twain journalism fame) had its HQ in Oakland. Back when it was owned by John D. Spreckels (it was later run by publishing baron William Randolph Hearst), the office was located in Oakland at 428 11th Street. Some more online searches revealed that the Bacon Block was also where the Suffrage State Central Committee, a women's suffrage movement, had some of its offices in 1908.
Does anyone know any more about Oakland's Bacon Block? Feel free to share your knowledge in the comments below.