About This Site

San Pablo Avenue is one of Northern California's most historic and vital passages, tracing its past to the earliest days of human settlement on the east side of San Francisco Bay.

Originally an Ohlone Indian trail, the route was traveled during the 1775-76 exploration by Juan Bautista de Anza, a Spanish Colonial missionary who, with 30 accompanying soldiers and families from Arizona, founded a presidio and mission and originated the colonization of San Francisco Bay.

In 1927 the road was designated the last leg of America's first transcontinental auto highway -- the famed Lincoln Highway, later U.S. Route 40 -- connecting New York City to San Francisco.

Today, the Avenue remains a common link for millions in the East Bay, connecting towns along a 19-mile stretch from Crockett on the Carquinez Straits to the heart of downtown Oakland.

The San Pablo Avenue Times is an ongoing experimental publication of the Graduate School of Journalism, reported and written by students in a beginning news reporting class. The reporters are covering many features of life on the Avenue and in these communities, from police in Berkeley and electoral politics in Oakland to courts of law in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.

The 2004 staff members are: Durrell Dawson, Michael Fitzhugh, Sarah Gordon, Joy Jia, Ryan Lillis, Kai Ma, Natasha Norton, Emilie Raguso, Aaron Selverson, and Leonie Sherman, The Times is edited by Michael Chandler and Neil Henry, and was designed by Scot Hacker.

Contact the Times at: avenueeditor@yahoo.com.