Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

By 1900, the crossroads settlement of Dimond, where Miller picked up his mail and his less robust guests, hosted four
unruly watering holes. From Saratoga Springs, New York, in February 1903, the poet wrote his brother regarding his
nephew’s wanderings: “I do not allow him to hang around Dimond: It is low, low: I never knew a boy about there
that did not go to the bad.”
Oakland History Room, Oakland Public Library
In 1910, Frank C. Havens of Realty Syndicate
purchased from his partner, Francis
“Borax” Smith, the East Bay’s mass
transit company. Included in the sale was
this streetcar, featured in a 1911 postcard
describing East 14th Street in Fruitvale
as “the road of a thousand wonders.”
Havens was now in charge of 13,000
acres—including the land surrounding
the Hights—in the Berkeley-Oakland
hills. For his part, Miller had joined the
land rush as early as 1887, when he purchased
several Oakland lots. By 1909, he
was focusing his resources on that siren
the eucalyptus, ordering and planting
that year thousands of trees.
California Historical Society,
CHS2012.1011.tif
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