Antioch downtown (#1210)

Despite having lived in the SF Bay Area for 13 years (‘83 to ‘96) and having been through Antioch on CA-4 many times through those years and subsequently, I never thought to go see what downtown Antioch looked like. Like many who have lived in the Bay Area, I thought of the small towns near the Bay in Contra Costa County as basically post-war (WWII) suburbs that probably didn’t have a lot of character or history. From a brief glimpse, it turns out I was missing quite a bit.

This is looking at the older downtown section of Antioch, with the El Campanil Theatre on the right (see adjacent picture). It turns out that Antioch is one of oldest towns in California, dating back to when a landing on the San Joaquin river was built here in 1848 and then growing from coal mining and then copper mining in the 1860’s and the city being incorporated in 1872. Consistent with my assumptions, it did end up becoming a bedroom community of San Francisco/Oakland, but it seems to have a long history as a fairly distinct city.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioch%2C_California