- City:
- Martinez, CA
- Site Type:
- Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels, Infrastructure and Utilities
- New Deal Agencies:
- Works Progress Administration (WPA), Work Relief Programs
- Started:
- 1936
- Completed:
- 1936
- Quality of Information:
- Good
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
In 1936, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) extended Berrellessa Street several blocks into the waterfront on the west end of town, which was the long-time neighborhood of Italian/Sicilian fishermen plying their trade on the Sacramento River and San Francisco Bay.
The neighborhood had housing, warehouses, a wharf and processing operations. Some of these remain, but not the wharf. There is a memorial to the Italian fisherman of Martinez over by the public marina, but not here (see below for link to local fishermen singing folk songs, 1939).
The WPA project included considerable rock and soil fill over former wetlands into the Carquinez Straits (where the Sacramento River meets San Francisco Bay). It also included filling and grading Buckley Street, which crosses Berrellessa (pronounced Berryessa).
The street is still in use and is now the access road to the Radke Martinez Regional Shoreline Park of the East Bay Regional Parks District. The neighborhood’s unique history is noted on the National Register of Historic Places recognition for the Downtown Martinez Historic District.
Source notes
Contra Costa Gazette
WPA project card dated 1936 (shown below)
Recordings of Italian fishermen of Martinez CA singing folk songs in 1939, recorded by Sidney Robertson. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/collections/sidney-robertson-cowell-northern-california-folk-music/?fa=language:italian
Site originally submitted by Kristin Henderson on January 28, 2022.
Additional contributions by Richard Walker.
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