Early in 1853, Chipman began to draw up a charter for what he envisioned as a city. The first choices for names included: Leandro City, Peralta or Elizabethtown, the latter likely chosen to memorialize and placate Auginbaugh’s wife, who didn’t get along well with Chipman. Finally in Chipman’s diary entry of June 11, 1853, the name Alameda had been settled upon.
In the haste to protect their investment, Chipman and Auginbaugh decided to overlook some bad reports about Dr. Hibbard that quickly bore themselves out. Hibbard’s $4,666.66 for 656.6 acres didn’t exactly get paid. Plus, once Hibbard went ahead and took possession anyway and built his wharf, he encouraged squatters like the Chester brothers and eight to ten others. Much to Chipman’s disappointment they began clear cutting the oak trees and tearing up Auginbaugh’s High Street planks for use as squatter’s marks. Hibbard only helped these men who in turn helped establish Hibbard as not the only squatter on land that didn’t belong to them. Chipman wrote about these frustrations (that he termed “Hibbardian malfeasance”) in his diary, recalling one of his earliest lot auctions, when a Hibbard man attended and proclaimed loudly that he already had title to the land at auction from the Peraltas for woodcutting. This Joseph Emeric served to sour the entire afternoon, and the buyers dissipated fearing they wouldn’t be able to substantiate their title. During the trial Chipman vs. Emeric and Hibbard begun last year, Peralta testified that he never gave anyone permission to cut any part of the trees (now supporting major American industries in the area) for any commercial purposes at any time, and that he never signed the Emeric version of the lease at all. The trial dragged on for years, however, costing Chipman and Auginbaugh unnecessary expenses, and causing fully a third of their land to be left without clear title.
For the other early landowners settling their lands in Alameda and environs, similar battles for the very land they had paid for ensued. J.J. Foley ended up giving 5 acres to Julius Chester and Pancoast in exchange for relinquishment of all future squatter claims. Sharon paid his squatters off as well. Chipman and Auginbaugh must have been disgusted seeing their buyers struggle with their claims. On one particularly good day, however, Chipman told his diary about one squatter who charged $1,500 to give up a parcel of land which turned out to have been planted with a crop of potatoes worth $2,500. Chester proved a particularly adept squatter, having been among the first; he later hired men to squat for him. In a few cases, Chester got sub-squatted when squatters settled on land he squatted on that legally belonged to people like C.C. Bowman in the first place.
One of Hibbard’s residents, Charles Minturn, launched the steamer, Clinton, from the Encinal Wharf (adjacent to Hibbard’s) which served as a ferry to the big city for passengers arriving by stagecoach. Encinal and Lands Adjacent suddenly overshadowed the efforts of Chipman and Auginbaugh, being popular with the Oakland crowd. Minturn’s company, Contra Costa Steam Navigation, founded the previous year, would monopolize ferry service to San Francisco on the East Bay peninsula for the next decade. The name Alameda was fading into insignificance.
Across San Antonio Creek sat the sprouting squatter town of Oakland. One of its founders, a particularly shrewd lawyer for the Peralta brothers, Horace Carpentier, had land below the high water mark surveyed for eventual reclamation and inclusion within Oakland’s borders – including the vast grassy salt marsh that formed the northwest quadrant of the peninsula. In 1853 Chipman recorded details of his court case regarding this survey in his diary. For once, the settlement had gone in his favor and the initial survey was set aside. The fight didn’t end however, dragging on for years with Carpentier having definite designs on incorporating the Encinal into Oakland’s borders.
Hibbard’s squatter-friendly atmosphere encouraged one of Carpentier’s friends, John Bowman, to helpfully offer his squatted-upon lands on the peninsula and the huge adjoining marsh, as the foundation for a village just a stretch further down from Hibbard’s Wharf.
Politically aligned with Oakland, Hibbard had the industry of Charles Minturn to rely on as well. Minturn’s wharf stretched 3,000 feet across marshland into the navigable water and he ran a regular ferry from the foot of Leviathan (now Grand) Street to San Francisco. The first loads of farm produce brought to market aboard ships from Hibbard’s Wharf marked the beginning of freight commerce in Alameda. The north shore has served as a center for shipping ever since.
The Hibbard squatters, and Pancoast (near today’s Park Street) tended 15 acres of strawberries along the northern waterfront and early on a tannery existed near the wharf to process skins and other materials from local hunters. With the two wharves and the first industry on the peninsula, the Encinal provided manual labor jobs for unskilled ex-miners often of foreign descent. Despite the abundance of land, Hibbard, like Chipman, laid out his lots on a fairly small grid. In the case of the Encinal, the tiny 100×25 lots supported a ramshackle bunch of houses and attracted a low-income and somewhat dense population. Hibbard named his streets after birds for east-west and fish for north-south. The only current-day survivors are Eagle Avenue and Paru Street. The Paru being a South American fish related to the butterfly fish.
While Chipman desperately clung to the hopes that he could foster the growth of a law-abiding community, and rightfully regain title to Hibbard’s third, communities like Oakland and many others around the state were championing squatters’ rights over the Mexican landholders. Thomas A. Smith bought land fairly in Chipman’s town. Every now and then a nice enough farmer fellow like Smith would give Chipman that little bit of hope.
More than 100 squatters in Oakland met to challenge Peralta authority and proclaim their rights over his property. Chipman had regularly spoken out against squatters and attempted to have everyone buy their land fairly in Alameda. Fierce competition for lot sales added to the rivalry between Alameda and its neighbor.
