The Point Isabel History Project needs you!
The Point Isabel History Project invites the community to help fine-tune a history of Point Isabel in Richmond, California.
A draft history of Point Isabel is now available for public comments, corrections, and additions.
Point Isabel Regional Shoreline, one of the East Bay’s most visited parks, sits on land with a rich and complex past. Once a small hill surrounded by marshland and home to the Ohlone people, the area has seen dramatic changes over 250 years—from a Spanish rancho and ferry stop to a dynamite factory, shooting club, and even an illegal dump site.
Though nearly lost to industrial development, the site was gradually restored starting in the 1980s. Today, it offers recreational open space, wildlife habitat, and Bay Trail access to over 1.5 million visitors annually.
Many events and people have been part of Point Isabel’s history. You are invited to be part of helping make this narrative reflect that.
A review draft will be available for three months this Fall. The expectation is to have it ready by the end of July 2025, pending reviews and getting permission to use various images. You’ll be able to read it here online or download it as a PDF file. The final document will be published in 2026.
We're eager for your comments, corrections, photos, anecdotes, stories, and perspectives, and will incorporate as many as possible and may share them on this website.
The Point Isabel History Project is partially funded by a grant from East Bay Regional Park District’s Regional Parks Foundation.
Chapter 1
The Point Isabel peninsula also has a long and complicated history. It is perhaps one of the most dramatically altered locations around the bay.
For thousands of years it was a small hill surrounded by marsh and water and was home to Ohlone people. Over the past 250 years, it has been part of a Spanish (and later Mexican) rancho; a 19th Century ferry stop; a dynamite factory; a gentlemen’s shooting club; and an illegal dump site for car batteries (resulting in a massive cleanup of lead and zinc in the mid-1980s). It dodged many other bullets along the way; at various times it was slated to become an international airport, harbor, or naval base.
About 15 years after the original Point Isabel was flattened for a sewage treatment plant and business park, the landfill began to be painstakingly reclaimed as something more natural. Today the open space and water access delight up to 1.5 million visitors a year, the Hoffman Marsh provides wildlife habitat and a stop for birds on the ancient Pacific Flyway migration path, and the Bay Trail offers visitors easy access to San Francisco Bay.
In 1975, East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) opened Point Isabel Regional Shoreline, clawing back a half mile of bay-fronting landfill and creating what would become one of EBRPD’s most popular parks. Since then, EBRPD has restored and preserved more than 50 miles of East Bay shoreline.
Remains of dumped TEPCO pottery, which was produced in El Cerrito, can be seen along the shoreline of Point Isabel. Much of the peninsula has been created since the 1950s through industrial fill.
Photo by Dave Weinstein
An early 19th Century map of the original Point Isabel peninsula superimposed onto a late 20th Century map.
The bow tie shape (center) is a low, rocky hill that had jutted into San Francisco Bay for thousands of years. It was flattened in the late 1950s.
The white rectangle under and north of it is the USPS distribution center. The green wrapped around the USPS facility on two sides is Point Isabel Regional Shoreline.
Across Hoffman Channel is North Point Isabel. North Point Isabel is technically part of McLaughlin Eastshore State Park but is managed as one park, along with Point Isabel Regional Shoreline, by EBRPD.
Here are some specific pieces of the Point Isabel puzzle we’re looking for. Maybe you have them?
Photo of Isabel Castro, daughter of Don Victor Castro, for whom Point Isabel was named. (As a married woman she went by Belle O’Neill.)
Photos from the San Pablo Avenue Sportsman’s Club, which had a clubhouse and shooting range at Point Isabel in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Photos of people swimming at the little beaches at Point Isabel before the original hilly promontory was leveled in the late 1950s.
Point Isabel Dog Owners’ early newsletters (PIDO News and The PIDO Pointer)
GET IN TOUCH
Coming soon! From July or August 2025, you’ll be able to download the Point Isabel history draft document here!
How to reach us, give feedback, or share what you’ve got:
We can also pick up materials from you:
To arrange pickup of photos, documents, or items, or for an address to mail them to, email us or leave us a voicemail. Thank you!
Email: point.isabel.history@gmail.com
Voicemail: 510-684-2091
Photo of the Point Isabel peninsula in 1861 by Carleton Watkins, from roughly where the Richmond Annex neighborhood is today.
Courtesy of Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley
