January 28 – April 8, 2005
Enterprising Oakland
Oakland International Airport

Airport Exhibition Archive

Construction workers on the Shredded Wheat Co. building in West Oakland, 1915. Collection of the Oakland Museum of California

Oakland Tribune Tower dominated the view down 13th Street toward Broadway, November 1952. Oakland Tribune Collection, Oakland Museum of California, gift of ANG Newspapers

Welcome to Oakland. By stepping into the Oakland International Airport terminal, you’re repeating a move made by millions over the past 150 years. Since the time of the Gold Rush, this edge of the bay was the end of the line for many a wanderer. Oakland was, literally, the terminal of the West: the last stop, the completion of the journey. You stepped from the boat, the train, the car, the plane and—boom. You were done. You’re here. You’d arrived.

Transportation meant another type of boom for Oakland. By wave, wings and wheels, adventurous entrepreneurs came from all parts of the world to transform their fortunes. They came from China to build dams and lay track; from Mexico to escape a revolutionary war; from back East to escape scandal; from Europe to escape starvation. And as they came and connived, built, bought and sold, failed and tried again, they transformed the city.

“ It was a driving, vigorous, restless population…that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences,” Mark Twain wrote in 1872. Oakland’s official founding fathers made their names with recklessness. Land-squatters, schemers, they could without compunction lay claim to an acre of the moon, then convince you to buy it. Just as important in growing Oakland business, however, were those whose names we don’t know: immigrants who loaded ships and toiled in factories; ladies who sold hankies in downtown stores; farmers, merchants and one-horse vendors who turned a sleepy burgh into a boom town.

This is a story of evolution, of movement and transition. Oakland may be a terminus, but that doesn’t mean it’s stopped. Step outside. Explore. You’ll find a city that thrives on reinvention. Oakland isn’t a single personality or point of view. It’s a shifting kaleidoscope of global culture, style and attitude. In 150 years of commerce, that’s the city’s selling point, the best product it offers. Go on—try a sample.

— Chiori Santiago, curator