The earliest recorded inhabitants were the Huchiun tribe, belonging to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone (a Miwok Indian word meaning "western people"). In Oakland, they were heavily concentrated around Lake Merritt and Temescal Creek, a stream which enters the San Francisco Bay at Emeryville. Temescal is an Aztec word for bath-house, brought north by Spanish colonizers.

Oakland, along with the rest of Northern California was claimed for Spain by visiting Spanish explorers in 1772. During its days under the Spanish Empire in the late 18th to early 19th century, and later under an independent Mexico in the early 19th century, Oakland (along with most of the East Bay), was owned by a wealthy landowner Luís María Peralta who named his area Rancho San Antonio. Upon his death in 1842, Peralta divided his land among his four sons as most of Oakland fell within the shares given to Antonio Maria and Vicente. They would open the land to settlement by American settlers, loggers, European whalers and fur-traders.

Full scale settlement and development occurred following California being conquered by the United States during the Mexican American war, and the California Gold Rush in 1848. Oakland was founded and incorporated in 1852 and grew with the railroads, becoming a major rail terminus in the late 1860s and 1870s. Originally comprising the area west of Lake Merritt (now downtown and Chinatown), it gradually annexed farmlands and settlements to the east and north. Oakland's rise to industrial prominence and its subsequent need for a seaport led to the digging of a shipping and tidal channel in 1902 creating the "island" of nearby town Alameda. In 1906 its population doubled with refugees made homeless after the San Francisco earthquake and fire who had fled to Oakland. By 1920, Oakland was the home of numerous manufacturing industries, including metals, automobiles, and shipbuilding.

Oakland was home to many activist groups during the 1960s and 70s. The Black Panther Party, created in 1966, is one of the better known groups that formed in Oakland. The city was also home to an innovative funk music scene which produced well-known bands like Sly & The Family Stone, Graham Central Station, Tower of Power, Cold Blood, and The Headhunters. Larry Graham, the bass player for both Sly & The Family Stone and GCS, is credited with the creation of the extremely influential "slap & pop" sound still widely used by bassists in many musical idioms today. It was also during the 1960's when the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club's Oakland Chapter, began to grow into a formidible organization. By the 1980's it was the most feared and respected of all Hells Angels Chapters. Its Oakland Clubhouse still sits at 4019 Foothill Boulevard in East Oakland.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Oakland featured prominently in rap music, both as the hometown for such artists as MC Hammer, Digital Underground, Spice 1, Hieroglyphics, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, The Luniz, Keak Da Sneak and Too $hort, and for its featuring in the lyrics of several songs, such as Baby Got Back, California Love and I Got 5 On It. 2pac, who grew up in Baltimore, New York, and later Marin City, lived in Oakland longer than in any other city and began his career as a roadie and dancer for Digital Underground. Outside of the rap scene, Grammy award winning artists Green Day, En Vogue and Tony! Toni! Tone! (headed by Raphael Saadiq) also emerged from the dynamic city. Currently, a rap movement from the Bay, hyphy, is taking the hip hop world by storm.

The Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on October 17, 1989 in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, measuring 7.1 on the Richter magnitude scale. Several structures in Oakland were badly damaged. The double-decker portion of the Cypress freeway structure, located in Oakland, collapsed, killing 42. The Eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge also sustained significant damage and was closed to traffic for one month. Throughout the 1990s, buildings throughout Oakland were retrofitted to better withstand earthquakes.

On October 20, 1991, the Oakland Hills firestorm engulfed much of the Oakland hills. 25 were killed and 150 injured and over 2,000 homes were destroyed. The economic loss has been estimated at $1.5 billion. Many homes were rebuilt much larger than they originally were.

In late 1996, Oakland was the center of a controversy surrounding Ebonics, an ethnolect the outgoing Oakland Unified School District board voted to recognize on December 18.

Jerry Brown, who was elected mayor of Oakland in 1998, initiated a plan to bring an additional 10,000 residents to downtown Oakland. The plan has resulted in several redevelopment projects near Lake Merritt, Jack London Square, and other neighborhoods just outside of downtown. These redevelopment projects have been controversial as many residents see these projects as gentrification, resulting in the loss of lower-income and minority residents in downtown Oakland. Additionally, the weakening of the Bay Area economy in 2000 and 2001 resulted in low occupancy of the new housing and slower growth and economic recovery than expected. As of 2004, the population of Oakland has increased to 409,300.

Additionally, the Oakland Athletics began searching for a site on which to build a new baseball stadium. The Athletics were interested in a site near Telegraph Avenue and 20th Street in downtown Oakland, but the site was instead slated for a housing development. The site was favored by the Athletics for a new stadium as it was accessible by public transit and nearby freeways. As of 2006, the Athletics are pursuing alternative sites for a new stadium outside of downtown Oakland, and even outside of the city altogether, drawing fears by some fans that the franchise may eventually leave Northern California (the southern suburb of Fremont has been named in the press as a possible site for a new A's ballpark).

In February 2006, the Oakland Ballet closed due to financial problems and the loss of their performance facility, the Calvin Simmons Theater at the Kaiser Convention Center. The Oakland Ballet had been performing in Oakland since 1965.

Though substantial gains have been made as evidenced from the Uniform Crime Reports published by the FBI, it still ranks higher in California for most categories of crime. In the 2005 Morgan Quitno crime rankings, Oakland ranked 21st worst in crime nationwide, though it fared better than the California cities of Richmond, Compton and San Bernardino.

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