Alameda County
Location and origin
At the northern end of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge are the outskirts of Berkeley which retains its small town character despite its considerable amount of industry and its 45,000 students. Founded on ranchland in 1866, it was planned from the first as a
university town. It is named after the Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley, responsible for the saying "Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way".
In 1991 entire residential districts in Berkeley were destroyed by a catastrophic fire which fire fighting precautions introduced after a similar conflagration in 1923 proved powerless to prevent.