ALAMEDA
It has been thought that this name may have been derived from the resemblance between Alameda creek, at one time thickly shaded along its banks by willows and silver-barked sycamores, and an alameda (an avenue shaded by trees), but since the primary meaning of the word is “a place where poplar trees grow,” from álamo (poplar or cottonwood), it requires less stretching of the imagination to believe that some such grove of cottonwoods near the creek gave it the name. Fray Dantí, in his diary of the exploration of “the Alameda” in 1795, says: “We came to the river of the Alameda, which has many large boulders, brought down by floods, and is well populated with willows, alders, and here and there a laurel. At a little distance from where the river runs, the tides of the Estuary come.”
THE FARALLONES.
“ ... standing like watch-dogs at our outer gate.”
From the name of an insignificant little stream, Alameda has come to be the designation of one of the most important counties in the state, and of the flourishing city on the east side of San Francisco Bay, nine miles east-southeast of San Francisco. This city was once known as Encinal (place of oaks), on account of the groves of beautiful live-oaks there, nearly all of which have, most unfortunately, been sacrificed to so-called “improvements.” Yet, some fine specimens still remain in the county, perhaps the best being those on the campus of the University of California, at Berkeley, Alameda County. The encino (live-oak), is thus described by Professor Jepsen: “It is a low, broad-headed tree, commonly twenty to forty feet, but sometimes seventy feet high. The trunk is from one to four feet in diameter, usually short, and parting into wide-spread limbs, which often touch or trail along the ground.” This tree has little commercial value, but is highly regarded for its hardy nature, which permits it to flourish in exposed localities along the coast, where no other tree thrives, and for the perennial green with which it adorns an otherwise often bleak landscape.—(Notes taken from The Trees of California, by Professor Willis Linn Jepsen, of the University of California.)