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Project Name: 475-493 St. John St. HRE Pleasanton Historic Resources Evaluation - DRAFT Project No: HP0932.2101.00 February 25, 2021 treanorhl.com 15 in the late 1840s, the Bernal family established permanent homes on their rancho, both to capitalize on the proximity to travel routes and to protect their land claims. The initial settlers constructed adobe homes along the path of the Arroyo del Valle. Originally called Alisal, the Pleasanton area remained sparsely populated in the 1850s, but news of the impending arrival of the railroad initiated an organized town development and an increase in population in the 1860s. The 1860s subdivisions along the axes of Main Street and the railroad formed the core of the Pleasanton town site. The arrival of the Central Pacific Railroad sparked a commercial, agricultural, and residential boom in Pleasanton as the community gained greater access to the major regional urban markets of San Francisco and Oakland. Between the 1870s and World War II, Pleasanton became a major regional supplier of commodity crops like grain, livestock, and agricultural products like hay. Local farmers and later major corporate agricultural interests grew or raised grass crops, hops, feed and table grains, market fruits and vegetables, wine grapes, sugar beets, and dairy cows. Pleasanton became a major regional shipping center for grain and hay, as well as a local leader in viticulture. The community also became nationally and internationally known as a center of horse breeding and training by the late nineteenth century. In the early twentieth-century, Pleasanton was also a major regional dairy producer and commercial flower growing site. Commercial activity in Pleasanton in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries clustered along Main Street and the Central Pacific Railroad line and centered on marketing and shipping agricultural commodities, servicing livestock, and providing retail, financial, legal, medical, and recreational services to residents. Industrial development in Pleasanton was limited, but included a major brickyard operation for Oakland’s Remillard Brick Company, gravel mining, and water supply infrastructure for the Spring Valley Water Company. Residential development on a substantive scale began in Pleasanton after the arrival of the Central Pacific Railroad in 1869, with development peaks in the 1880s and 1890s and the early decades of the twentieth century.14 […] Property types associated with post-railroad residential subdivision and development in Pleasanton [ca. 1869-1900] include residences exhibiting nationally popular forms and architectural detailing consistent with the Gothic Revival, Italianate, and Queen Anne styles as well as common nineteenth-century vernacular housing forms. Based on historic map evidence, residential buildings in the downtown neighborhoods of Pleasanton from the period consisted of largely single-story, rectangular or square plan dwellings with small rear dependencies. Toward the later decades of the nineteenth-century, more asymmetrical plan houses consistent with Queen Anne style housing forms appeared in greater numbers. Residential properties typically had one or more single-story, wood-frame outbuildings on the property to shelter horses, wheeled vehicles, poultry, and other uses. Few properties maintained tank houses after 1890.15 Pleasanton incorporated as a city in 1894. In the early 20th century, the community constructed a city hall and established a local high school. World War II brought a small boom in commercial and agricultural activity, spurred by the needs of the war effort and the nearby service members and war workers. The U.S. Navy constructed the Naval Construction Battalion Center in 1943 and later Camp Parks and Camp Shoemaker, just north of Pleasanton. After World War II, commercial and residential development in Pleasanton continued on the outskirts of the downtown area. The former agricultural districts saw development of large-scale research, office, 14 Pleasanton Downtown Historic Context Statement, 11-12. 15 Pleasanton Downtown Historic Context Statement, 83.