Berkeley. Berkeley is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321. Berkeley is home to the oldest campus in the University of California, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is managed and operated by the university. It also has the Graduate Theological Union, one of the largest religious studies institutions in the world. Berkeley is considered one of the most socially progressive cities in the United States. Indigenous history This pit in the surface of a rock at Indian Rock Park is typical of those used by the Ohlone people to grind acorns. The site of today's City of Berkeley was the territory of the Chochenyo/Huchiun Ohlone people when the first Europeans arrived. Evidence of their existence in the area include pits in rock formations, which they used to grind acorns, and a shellmound, now mostly leveled and covered up, along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay at the mouth of Strawberry Creek. Human remains and skeletons from Native American burials have been unearthed in West Berkeley and on campus alongside Strawberry Creek. Other artifacts were discovered in the 1950s in the downtown area during remodeling of a commercial building, near the upper course of the creek. Spanish and Mexican eras The first people of European descent arrived with the De Anza Expedition in 1776. The De Anza Expedition led to establishment of the Spanish Presidio of San Francisco at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Luis Peralta was among the soldiers at the Presidio. For his services to the King of Spain, he was granted a vast stretch of land on the east shore of San Francisco Bay for a ranch, including that portion that now comprises the City of Berkeley. Berkeley and much of the East Bay was part of Rancho San Antonio, granted to the Peralta family in 1820. Luis Peralta named his holding Rancho San Antonio. The primary activity of the ranch was raising cattle for meat and hides, but hunting and farming were also pursued. Eventually, Peralta gave portions of the ranch to each of his four sons. What is now Berkeley lies mostly in the portion that went to Peralta's son Domingo, with a little in the portion that went to another son, Vicente. No artifact survives of the Domingo or Vicente ranches, but their names survive in Berkeley street names. However, legal title to all land in the City of Berkeley remains based on the original Peralta land grant. The Peraltas' Rancho San Antonio continued after Alta California passed from Spanish to Mexican sovereignty after the Mexican War of Independence. However, the advent of U.S. sovereignty after the Mexican-American War, and especially, the Gold Rush, saw the Peraltas' lands quickly encroached on by squatters and diminished by dubious legal proceedings. The lands of the brothers Domingo and Vicente were quickly reduced to reservations close to their respective ranch homes. The rest of the land was surveyed and parceled out to various American claimants. Politically, the area that became Berkeley was initially part of a vast Contra Costa County. On March 25, 1853, Alameda County was created from a division of Contra Costa County, as well as from a small portion of Santa Clara County. The area that became Berkeley was then the northern part of theOakland Township subdivision of Alameda County. During this period, Berkeley was mostly a mix of open land, farms, and ranches, with a small, though busy, wharf by the bay. Late 19th century Horses Grazing, Berkeley; painted by artist William Hahn in 1875 In 1866, Oakland's private College of California looked for a new site. It settled on a location north of Oakland along the foot of the Contra Costa Range on Strawberry Creek, at an elevation of about 500 feet above the bay, commanding a view of the Bay Area and the Pacific Ocean through the Golden Gate. According to the Centennial Record of the University of California, In 1866, at Founders' Rock, a group of College of California men watched two ships standing out to sea through the Golden Gate. One of them, Frederick Billings, thought of the lines of the Anglo-Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley, 'westward the course of empire takes its way,' and suggested that the town and college site be named for the eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish philosopher.