, a Mexican-era
rancho granted to
Francisco María Castro in 1823 and reconfirmed to his son Don
Víctor Castro, a noted
Californio ranchero and politician (pictured), in 1834. The
Ohlone were the first inhabitants of the Richmond area, settling an estimated 5,000 years ago. They spoke the
Chochenyo language, and subsisted as
hunter-gatherers and
harvesters.
Origins The site that would eventually become the city of Richmond was part of the
Rancho San Pablo land granted to Don
Francisco María Castro, from which the nearby town of San Pablo inherited its name; the
Point Richmond area was known originally as The Potrero and then renamed as Point Stevens in early charts of
San Francisco Bay.
Standard Oil set up operations on land sold by Emily Tewksbury in 1901, including what is now the
Chevron Richmond Refinery and
tank farm, which
Chevron still operates. There is a pier into San Francisco Bay south of
Point Molate for oil tankers.
Early days The city of Richmond was incorporated in 1905. Until the enactment of prohibition in 1919, the city had the largest
winery in the world; The facility connected with both the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific and serviced their passenger coach equipment. The Pullman Company was a large employer of African American men, who worked mainly as
porters on the Pullman cars. Many of them settled in the East Bay, from Richmond to Oakland, before World War II. From 1917 and throughout the 1920s, the
Ku Klux Klan was active in the city. In 1930 the
Ford Motor Company opened the
Richmond Assembly Plant, which later moved to
Milpitas in 1956. The old Ford plant in Richmond has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1988. In 2004 it was purchased by developer Eddie Orton, who converted it into an events center named Ford Point Building–The Craneway.
Wartime boomtown and shifting demographics At the onset of
World War II, the four
Richmond Shipyards were built along Richmond's waterfront, employing thousands of workers, many migrating to Richmond from other parts of the country after being recruited. These new workers generally lived in housing constructed specifically for the wartime boom, scattered throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including Richmond, Berkeley and Albany. Many of these new migrants were
Black Americans from the South and to a lesser extent the Midwest who took jobs in heavy industry and transport as those industries expanded to meet the needs of the war economy, while increased numbers of women also joined the industrial workforce for the first time as large numbers of working-age men were drafted for the war effort. During the war, Richmond's population increased dramatically, rising from 23,000 in 1940 to 114,899 in 1942 and peaking at around 120,000 by 1945. A specially built rail line, the
Shipyard Railway, transported workers to the shipyards. Kaiser's Richmond shipyards built 747
Victory and
Liberty ships for the war effort, more than any other site in the U.S. The shipyards broke many records, including the completion of a Liberty ship in just five days. On average the yards built a new ship in 30 days. The medical system established for the shipyard workers at the
Richmond Field Hospital eventually became today's
Kaiser Permanente HMO. The hospital remained in operation until 1993, when it was replaced by the
Richmond Medical Center hospital, which has since expanded to a multi-building campus. Point Richmond was Richmond's original commercial hub, but a new downtown arose in the center of the city along Macdonald Avenue during the war. It was populated by department stores such as
Kress,
J.C. Penney,
Sears,
Macy's, and
Woolworth's. File:Richmondunderpass.jpg|An
E&SR streetcar in the Macdonald Avenue subway in downtown Richmond, 1906 File:"4,000 Unit Housing Project Progress Photographs March 6,1943 to August 11, 1943, Looking down a street towards the... - NARA - 296755.tif|A 4,000-unit housing project was completed in Richmond during 1943. File:USNS General A.W. Greely (T-AP-141) at Thule, Greenland, on 19 July 1951 (NH 97108).jpg|, built in Richmond File:12-3-1 Permanente-Nos1-4-25.jpg|Aerial photo of Richmond Shipyards, 1944, view directed north: #3 (west, foreground); #2 (rectangular basin, east foreground); #4 (end of the channel, south bank); #1 (north of the channel bend). File:Wendy Welder Richmond Shipyards.jpg|A "Wendy the Welder" at the Kaiser
Richmond Shipyards, contributing to the
war effort File:Welders Alivia Scott, Hattie Carpenter, and Flossie Burtos await an opportunity to weld their first piece of steel - NARA - 535800.jpg|Richmond Shipyards welders prepare for a performance demonstration test
Post-war decline and rebound When the war ended the shipyard workers were no longer needed, and a decades-long population decline ensued. The census listed 99,545 residents in 1950. By 1960 much of the temporary housing built for the shipyard workers was torn down, and the population dropped to about 71,800. Just before his April 1968
assassination,
Martin Luther King Jr. had been working on plans for the
Poor People's Campaign, including a multi-city tour of the U.S. with a stop in Richmond. His son,
Martin Luther King III, completed the Poverty in America Tour in 2007, stopping in Richmond. Most notably, the Travalini Furniture Store was destroyed by fire, which was assumed to be the result of the violent protests, but according to Fraser Felter, who was a reporter for the
Richmond Independent, police sources told him the fire was set to avoid a debt instead by destroying store records. In the 1970s, the Hilltop area was developed in Richmond's northern suburbs, further depressing the downtown area as it drew retail clients and tenants away to the large indoor Hilltop Mall, which opened in 1976. The shopping mall, last named
Hilltop Horizon, was opened under
Taubman Centers, and has been sold since then to GM Pension Trust (1998),
Simon Property Group (2007),
Jones Lang LaSalle (2012), LBG Real Estate (2017), and
Prologis (2021), who announced plans to close and demolish the building, reusing the land for a mixed-use development including residential, retail, and logistics facilities. In the late 1990s the
Richmond Parkway was built along Richmond's western industrial and northwestern parkland, connecting Interstates 80 and 580. Construction of the Parkway, which follows the alignment of
SR 93 as proposed in 1958, started in 1990 and completed in 1996 at a cost of $193 million. However,
Caltrans issued a letter in 1998 saying it would not take over responsibility for the road unless it was brought up to expressway standards; as it was cost-prohibitive to convert it, the road remains the responsibility of the city and county. In 2006, the city celebrated its centennial. This coincided with the repaving and streetscaping project of
Macdonald Avenue. The city's old rundown commercial district along Macdonald has been designated the city's "Main Street District" by the state of California. This has led to funding of improvements in the form of state grants. ==Geography==