WHO WE ARE

About the society

The El Cerrito Historical Society is a non-profit, 501(c) tax-exempt organization founded in 1975 and focused on locating and preserving the local history of El Cerrito, California, and environs.

Membership is open to everyone. Benefits include email delivery of our “Sparks from the Anvil” and postal mailing of “The Forge” newsletters.

Our Facebook page and YouTube channel inform members and the public of upcoming events and document presentations made throughout the year.

The historical society board meets monthly and the public is welcome to attend in person or via Zoom. Board members are:

President Dave Weinstein is a longtime journalist who has worked for the West County Times and Contra Costa Times, written for the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications, and was features editor of the magazine CA Modern. He has written books about architecture and local history. Dave is president of El Cerrito Trail Trekkers, a founder of Friends of the Cerrito Theater and a former member of several city committees, including the Environmental Quality Committee. Dave is from Long Island, New York and has lived in El Cerrito since 1981. He has been on the board since 2011.

Vice president Jon Bashor was born in Los Angeles, spent his teens in Bakersfield and moved to the Bay Area in 1980 to attend the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, where he was a classmate of Dave Weinstein. Jon was a daily newspaper reporter for the Berkeley Gazette, Richmond Independent and the Contra Costa Times. He recently retired after 30 years as a writer and communications manager at the Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkley national laboratories. He has served on the El Cerrito Parks and Recreation Commission and the Friends of the El Cerrito Library board (with Tom Panas). He also writes for and edits the society’s Forge newsletter.

Secretary Ed Crowley purchased a California ranch-style home in El Cerrito in 1987 and moved in shortly afterward. He holds BS, EECS and MBA degrees from Cal. After a long career at PG&E, he accepted their generous severance, then worked in computing infrastructure administration and management for a company in Fremont, followed by stints with three technical consultancies before recently retiring. Ed now spends much of his time managing the family's rental units and travelling with his wife, sometimes including their two grown sons.

Treasurer Tom Panas is a retired CPA, was raised in the Bay Area, attended UC Berkeley, and has lived in El Cerrito since 1975. “I am a past president, secretary, and treasurer of the society and have served 20 years on the board,” Tom says.

At-large member Patricia Durham is the owner of Durham Tax Services in Richmond. Patricia retired from UC Berkeley and Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation in Oakland. An alumnus of El Cerrito High School, she served as president of the El Cerrito High School Archiving Committee. She is chairperson of the city’s annual Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. Parade and Celebration.

At-large member Michael Martin was born in Berkeley and moved to El Cerrito as a boy in 1958. By 1972, he was a graduate of, in succession, the El Cerrito Cooperative Preschool, Del Mar Elementary, Portola Jr. High, and El Cerrito High schools. Martin then left for New Haven, Connecticut for his undergraduate degree at Yale, where he was a record-breaking pole vaulter and among the first Black members of the world-famous Whiffenpoofs. He returned to the East Bay for his law degree, which he earned at Berkeley Law in 1981. Martin then left for Washington, D.C. where he spent the next 30 years working as an attorney for the Department of Justice and other federal agencies.

At-large member Meredith McGuire grew up in Oakland, but her mother's decades of teaching in the West Contra Costa Unified School District ensured an early and long-standing affection for El Cerrito, to which she moved in 2018. She holds a BA from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago. A lifelong history buff who watched ‘Romancing the Stone’ at a formative age, she is also, under a pseudonym, the USA Today bestselling author of 12 novels, now translated into a dozen-plus languages, that pair close attention to 18th and 19th century history with occasional (and entirely consensual) acts of bodice ripping.

A brief history of El Cerrito

Around 1900 most of the hills were mostly bare, with very few trees but several dairies and chicken farms. There were more cattle in the area than people. The main thoroughfare through the area was San Pablo Avenue with businesses from the County Line near Fairmount Avenue (then called Road 4) to Potrero Avenue (then called Stege Junction). None of the roads were paved so there was dust in the summer and mud in the winter; between Fairmount Avenue and the county line it was almost impossible to get through without wearing boots.

After the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco the village of Rust started to grow as refugees from San Francisco moved to this side of the Bay to live. The community was named for Wilhelm F. Rust, who was born in Hannover, Germany, on Nov. 27, 1857 and came to California in 1883. He leased property, built a blacksmith shop and grew his business and later built a hardware store. In one corner of his hardware store the first post office in the area opened in 1909; Rust was named the first postmaster on March 1, 1909.

In 1913, the directors of the new Stege Sanitary District held their first meeting in Stege Junction, a community that grew up around the intersection of San Pablo and Potrero avenues. Located between Stege Junction and Rust was Schmidtville, an area around Schmidt Lane. Laid out by two gentlemen named Schmidt and Fink in 1893, it was one of the earliest subdivisions in the area.

The growing town of 1,500 people incorporated as a city in 1917 and was renamed El Cerrito, which means Little Hill in Spanish. A key reason for incorporation was to raise money to provide necessary services, such as fire and police protection.

The first thing the city council did after the city was incorporated was to levy a large license fee on each of the saloons in town to pay the wages of marshal, clerk and treasurer, and for other needs of the city. A large amount of revenue was collected for the city as there were almost 20 saloons scattered about the community, but mostly along San Pablo Avenue.

Priority was also given to a street paving program and soon after incorporation the driving of cattle down San Pablo Avenue was stopped. Ranchers used to drive large herds down the streets to a corral on the south side of Fairmount Avenue just west of the Santa Fe tracks. From there, cattle were shipped by rail or driven to the slaughterhouse on Central Avenue. This herding kicked up clouds of dust, leading residents to demand an end to the practice.

The area grew slowly, reaching a population of 3,852 in 1930 and 7,000 in 1940. World War II led to a temporary influx, causing the population to soar to 16,624. Then came the post-war housing boom, leading to a permanent population of 8,000 in 1950. Today, El Cerrito has a population of 25,500.