Old Shellmound Park
Emeryville 'History' Goes Back to 2000 B.C.
- By ROBERT STINNETT
Emeryville has a "link" with the past - a past so old that it ventures back
before the birth of Christ to probably 2000 B. C.
This "link" has served as a pivot whereby University of California
archaeologists, culminating a study begun almost 50 years ago, have been
able to determine that human culture was flourishing in the Bay Area
hundreds of years before Caesar - even before Salome begged for the head of
John the Baptist.
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| The huge size of the Emeryville shellmound is evident in this photograph taken in October, 1924, when University of California archaeologists probed for link with ancient past. - Photographs courtesy of Bancroft Library. |
This link with the past that U. C. archaeologists used as a basic pivot for
study of the early culture of Northern California was the Emeryville
shellmound. Thousands of metropolitan Oaklanders remember it as Shellmound
Park - one finest picnic grounds this area was ever seen.
Using the shellmound as the basic find, archaeologists have gone further in
locating evidence of early peoples. It is their belief that human culture
existed in Northern California as long as 15,000 years ago.
"The shellmound, which was first probed in 1902, is the youngster of the
university finds as pertaining to this area," says Prof. Robert Heizer of
403 Coventry Road, Berkeley, professor of anthropology at U. C. and director
of the California Archaeological Survey.
Looking back over nearly 50 years of research on Northern California's grey
dawn past by scores of U. C. scientists, Heizer can pinpoint certain
historic discoveries which show human life in this section of the state,
centuries before Menes, the first king of recorded history, ruled the valley
of the Nile.
Heizer's recent discovery of "Concord Man," who lived in Contra Costa County an estimated 6000 years ago, evidences
human culture in Concord before Egypt's slaves, under the lash of Ceops,
built the great Pyramids.
At Lodi, in San Joaquin County, skull and bones were dug up which U.C.
anthropology experts estimated at 13,000 years old.
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| Shellmound Park was a favorite amusement spot for Oaklánders in 1907. |
The first large scale probe into this area's past was undertaken in 1902 at
the shellmound in Emeryville. But the Caledonian Club, the Bricklayers
Guild, the Teamsters Union and the Rebel Cork Society (among many) didn't
particularly relish having "those queer looking ducks from U. C."
interrupting their picnics, and an exacting study of the huge mound wasn't
possible.
But then came the Volstead Act. Plainly speaking, it meant no more beer or
hard liquors served in the park, no more schutzenfests for the German
societies.
Somehow dancing on the Shellmound pavilion didn't seem the same. It wasn't
long until the park was losing money.
In 1924 it closed for good. The carnival equipment was moved to San Rafael,
and the land was sold for industrial sites. As the land was being readied
for the huge factories, U. C. scientists asked for and got permission to
sift the mound. It was no bump in the earth. The heap was 40 feet high and
some 200 feet through at the base.
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| Another view of the big mound taken in 1924, shortly after the park closed down and archaeologists "moved in." |
Originally archaeologists estimate the mound had cones 60 feet high. They
believe six million cubic feet of material was collected in the shellmounds.
The first people who came to the site camped just above the shore line,
possible on little hummocks at the edge of the marsh at the mouth of
Temescal Creek.
Their primary purposes in camping in the area was to gather shellfish from
the beds existing there and to hunt sea otter which abounded in the bay.
As shellfish were obtained, the shells were thrown aside, and these with the
by-products of daily life, increased the height of the campground and
gradually crept out into the marsh.
This shell area grew until it covered hundreds of thousands of square
feet-marked by several cones, the highest of which rose to almost 40 feet,
A considerable portion of western Emeryville today rests on this area - the
land actually filled in by hand by these primitive peoples.
As the populace died they were placed on the mound and covered with shells.
The deceased's belongings - crude implements such as stones and flint arrows
- were buried, with the body and from their age archaeologists were able to
estimate when the mound had its beginning.
Skulls unearthed at the base of the mound were of a higher order of cranium
development than that of the Neanderthal Man of post-glacial time.
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