Today Oakland is the anchor of the East Bay — a city of hills and harbor looking across the water at San Francisco. Its port pioneered container shipping in 1962 and remains one of the busiest in the country, and its neighborhoods carry the city's real life: Rockridge and Temescal with their storefronts and cafes, the Fruitvale district and Chinatown with some of the best food in California, Montclair up in the wooded hills. It is a city of neighborhoods, food, murals, and art, proudly diverse and proud of its table. Through every chapter, Oakland has been a crossroads — the western end of the line, where the continent meets the bay.
The lake earned its jewelry in 1925, when the Necklace of Lights — 126 lampposts strung with 3,400 pearly bulbs — was lit around the shore. Switched off for the wartime blackout in 1941, it stayed dark for nearly half a century until a citizens' campaign relit it in 1987, and it marked its hundredth birthday in 2025. The lake's most famous residents got their honor more recently: black-crowned night herons, stocky and red-eyed, have nested around Lake Merritt and the downtown trees for generations, and in 2019 — after a two-year campaign begun by a class of Oakland third-graders — the City Council voted unanimously to make the night heron the city's first official bird.
Why People Visit Oakland
Visitors come to Oakland for a Bay Area city with its own strong character: a wild lake at its center, redwood groves in the hills, a historic waterfront, and one of the most celebrated food scenes in California. The museums and Jack London Square sit minutes from the lake, and San Francisco is a quick trip across the bay. Equal parts oak-grove heritage and creative energy, Oakland rewards anyone drawn to the heart of the East Bay.
