How a classic card game helped decide this East Bay city's name

Historian details the oak meadows of Oakley

Historian Carol A. Jensen details the oak meadows of Oakley and more. 

OAKLEY, Calif. - The name of this East Contra Costa County city traces back not to a city council vote or a founder's decree, but to a friendly game of cards.

Carol Jensen, a historian with the East Contra Costa Historical Society and author of "Oakley Through Time," recounts how one of the town's founders, Randolph Marsh, purchased roughly 20 acres in what is now Oakley and set about building a new township, recruiting settlers to the area.

Marsh, who would later become a county supervisor – and a fellow settler named Joel Wightman – couldn't agree on what to call the new community. Wightman wanted to name it after Admiral George Dewey, hero of the Spanish-American War. Marsh had his heart set on Oakley. 

Town's name decided in a card game

The backstory:

Unable to settle the dispute any other way, the two men did what any reasonable settler might: they played cribbage. 

Marsh won, and Oakley was officially named.

"They admired the beautiful oak meadows in this area — beautiful California and live oaks," Jensen said. In Scotland, she explained, an oak meadow is called an "oak leigh." 

The spelling was simplified to Oakley, and the name stuck.

Big Break Regional Park

Local perspective:

The region's identity would later be shaped by something else entirely: asparagus. The marshy, peat-rich Delta soil stretching from the Antioch Bridge east to Bethel Island proved ideal for growing the crop, and for a time the area dominated asparagus production in the state.

That era came to an abrupt end when a levee just east of what is now the Antioch Bridge catastrophically failed. The breach was so severe it could never be repaired, and water poured in permanently — transforming prime farmland into open water.

Today, that flooded landscape is Big Break Regional Park, an East Bay Regional Park District facility known for fishing and Delta recreation. It is also where Jensen shared the story of how a card game — and a Scotsman's word for oak meadow — gave Oakley its name.