Cooley Landing (East Palo Alto, California) | park, place with historical importance, wharf

 park, place with historical importance, wharf, landing

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Cooley Landing was built up from landfill beginning around 1932, but its history goes back to 1849. This was the site of the original Town of Ravenswood where San Francisco banker Isaiah Woods settled in 1849 and built a home, dairy, and wharf. The name Ravenswood supposedly comes from the crows living there. It became a bustling port, shipping bricks to build homes everywhere, including the San Francisco Palace Hotel. For a while it was the only port between San Jose and San Francisco.

Ravenswood did not ultimately succeed as a port or a town. The name “Cooley Landing” comes from Lester Cooley who purchased the nearly abandoned area in 1868 and built an estate there. From 1932 -1960, the landing became a San Mateo County dump, with open burning of refuse. The artificial peninsula that exists today was built up from the landfill at the dump. Then Mr. Carl Schoof bought it in 1960 and started Palo Alto Boat Works which operated until the late ‘90s.

The flanks of Cooley Landing were owned by Utah Mining Company, which once harvested oyster shells to use in making cement before the oyster colonies died from sewage discharge from cities around the South Bay.

In 1998, Mr. Schoof sold the 6.75-acre area to the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), which has kept it as a nature conservation area. The area owned by POST actually includes only the center part of Cooley Landing and the area extending out into the Bay. The land on either side is already owned by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. Only the center is within the City of East Palo Alto; the side areas are part of Menlo Park.

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