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Beginning in the early 1850s, Oakland s good weather and open spaces attracted many visitors from the nearby booming metropolis of San Francisco. They came by ferry to the semi-rural East Bay to enjoy a day or longer of healthy outdoor recreation. By the 1870s, Oakland s popularity as a place for leisure had motivated numerous entrepreneurs to establish for-profit sites for recreation and sport that served both visitors and their own city s growing population. Oakland s natural advantages were not lost on its business and political leadership. During the 1880s and 1890s, a time when growing attention was directed toward various aspects of personal and public health, Oakland s geography and climate were believed to make it an unusually healthy city. A physically active population and low mortality rate became major selling points in campaigns aimed at attracting new residents and businesses to the East Bay. In the decades between the Civil War and the great 1906 earthquake, Oakland was convincingly advertised as America s healthiest city.

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Deane Anderson Lamont was born in the United Kingdom but has resided in California for 25 years. In 1996 he earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Since then he has been a professor at Saint Mary s College of California. His scholarly interests focus on the history of health and sport in Victorian Britain and America.

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