Civil Municipal Magazine - Dec 2023

PI T TSBURG , CAL I FORNIA The Rancho Los Medanos land grant was purchased again in 1900 by C.A. Hooper, a wealthy lumber baron, who saw in Black Diamond a perfect place to build a manufacturing plant to turn his raw wood into saleable product: there was plenty of open flat land on which to build, waterfront property that was sufficient for deep water lumber ships, available manpower for a workforce, and two transcontinental railroads that traversed the town, in which to move his wood products inland. Hooper continued to develop his land with the addition of new industrial concerns – a rubber plant, brick works, a dairy, a flour mill -- culminating with the establishment of the Columbia Steel Company, which opened its first foundry in 1910. He also brought in the area’s first electrical generation and transmission infrastructure, built homes for his workers, paved streets, and donated land for schools, parks, and churches. In 1903 the town was incorporated, and by a vote of the citizenry, was officially named Black Diamond, after the mining firm. That name was finally replaced by Pittsburg (without the “h”) in 1911, as the steel industry became the city’s prime economic driver. Indeed, by the early 1950s, Columbia Steel, which became a subsidiary of U.S. Steel in 1930, was employing 5,200 workers. Another major employer in the city was the Dow Chemical Company, which established its operations in Pittsburg in 1939. One last event that strongly impacted Pittsburg’s history and heritage came about in 1942, with the opening of Camp Stoneman, a U.S. Army facility that served as a major troop staging area for soldiers deploying to the Far East during both World War II and the Korean conflict. While the camp was decommissioned in 1954, the city’s ethnic and demographic diversity broadened as retiring service members with different backgrounds and from different places in the U.S. chose to make Pittsburg their permanent home.