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.
Oakland's character grew richer as the city did. The young Jack London prowled its waterfront before he ever wrote a word, and the wharves where he loafed are now Jack London Square. In the 1920s and '30s the city raised two of the finest movie palaces in the West — the Fox Oakland of 1928 and the great Art Deco Paramount of 1931, all gilt and neon. And in 1950, on the shore of Lake Merritt, Oakland opened Children's Fairyland, a storybook park that has enchanted generations of Bay Area kids. The Town had become a place of theaters, parks, and waterfront stories.
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.
