Please join us for our Annual Meeting for OHA members and board elections on January 26, 2023 from 6:30-7pm. Afterwards, we will have a lecture, open to the public, on the history of the Caldecott Tunnel presented by Mary McCosker, president of the Lafayette Historical Society, and author of Building the Caldecott Tunnel (Images of America) published by Arcadia Publishing.
Annual Meeting Oakland Heritage Alliance Financials for review
About the lecture
Today the Caldecott Tunnel connects Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. The original two bores of this tunnel opened in 1937, the same year as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and changed Contra Costa County from an area of small rural communities into one of growing suburbs. But this was not the first tunnel to connect these counties. The Kennedy Tunnel, opened in 1903, was accessed by steep and winding roads and was located several hundred feet above today's tunnel. A third bore was opened in 1964 and a long-awaited fourth bore in late 2013. The tunnels have not been without disaster and tragedy over their hundred-plus years of existence, yet they remain an integral part of the commercial, social, and historic fabric of the region.
Image credit: The Oakland portal of the Kennedy Tunnel c. 1905. Photo courtesy of the Lafayette Historical Society.