Rob AriasWho knew Emeryville was a focal point of the civil war on the West Coast? This article references Camp Downey, an Infantry training camp located on a tract now occupied by Emeryville City Hall and Pixar Studios.
How the Bay Area helped the Union win the Civil War
Most of the Bay Area infantry men drilled at Camp Downey on a tract now occupied by Emeryville City Hall and Pixar Studios, according to Evanosky.
“There weren’t any battles in California, but that’s because California soldiers who trained right here in Camp Downey went out east to battle Confederates in Arizona,” he said. “The Confederacy didn’t have the wherewithal to continue moving west. But what if these (Bay Area) guys had just said, ‘What was the point?’ The Confederacy would definitely have come to Los Angeles.”
He said the cavalry trained alongside the Oakland estuary at Camp Merchant, on a farm near where today’s Interstate 880 passes 17th Avenue. Newspapers remarked that the sun and climate made the East Bay a more healthful place to train than San Francisco’s foggy Presidio.
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