Hayward, California is an undistinguished city in Alameda County on the east shore of San
Francisco Bay. Its boosters, somewhat optimistically, call Hayward
"The Heart of the Bay". By car, Hayward is around 30 miles from both San Francisco
and San José; it is around 10 miles from
Oakland. (These distances vary
according to which parts of each city you are talking about.)
The local newspaper, the Hayward Daily Review, is a member of the
ANG newspaper chain, and is not very good. I read it for
the local news. The nearest major newspapers
are the San Francisco Chronicle and the San José Mercury News. These
are of course published in San Francisco and
San José respectively. They
do not have local editions.
Hayward is named after William Hayward, who squatted in 1851 on part of
El Rancho San Lorenzo. He built a general store, the first of many
enterprises he established in the area, and later legally bought 40 acres
from Don Guillermo Castro, the owner of the rancho. Hayward was
incorporated in 1876 as the "Town of Haywood's"; this was later corrected.
The area of Hayward is about 61 square miles. It stretches from
the San Francisco Bay across the coastal plain into the local part of the
California Coastal Range, which is called the Hayward Hills.
The Hayward fault, which runs under Hayward, produced a damaging
earthquake in 1868. As is typical of coastal California, the weather is
mostly pleasant; when there
is a high pressure zone to the east in the summer, a hot
dry wind can blow
from the interior, producing desert-like weather. This typically happens for
a few days each summer. A few miles inland, in the cities of Dublin and Pleasanton, such weather is much more
common in the summer.
Hayward is contiguous with Fremont and Union City. The
unincorporated areas of Ashland, Cherryland, San Lorenzo lie between it and the city of
San Leandro. Hayward is also adjacent to the unincorporated area of
Castro Valley and Fairview.
Much of Hayward is suburban and residential. In 2000, the
U.S. census recorded a population of 140,030. Median
annual
household income was $51,777. Fifty one percent spoke English at home, 27%
spoke Spanish
at home, and numerous languages accounted for the remainder.
In 2005, the estimated population was 146,027; there had been a slowdown in
population increase due to the dot com collapse. In the 2000
census, the population categorized itself as 43.0% White, 19.0% Asian,
11.0%
Black, 1.9% Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, 0.8% American Indian and
Alaskan Native, 16.8% other, and 7.5% two or more races. Hayward is said to
be a center
for Fijians of Indian descent. Haywardites are
not segregated by ethnicity. It would probably be fair
to call Hayward ethnically diverse. On average,
the Hayward Hills is the most
affluent part of Hayward. Hayward has an industrial park and some
high tech companies; however it is better known for its truck
yards.
The general area is well
supplied with places to shop. In Hayward itself, there is Southland Mall,
some big-box stores, including Target, K-Mart and Costco, and numerous
smaller stores.
Hayward is not a particularly violent city by U.S. standards (it
had 8 murders in 2003), but street drug dealing does occur
in several places.
Thee is also gang activity in some areas, including violence between the
Norteño and Sureño gangs. The Nortenos are
the more numerous in Hayward.
There are a few homeless people in Hayward; possibly their numbers are kept
down by the fact that San Francisco, just a BART
ride away, pays people $400
a month to be homeless in San Francisco. It will be interesting to see
what effect San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom's proposed
"care not cash" program, if enacted, has on the numbers of homeless in
Hayward.
As in all parts of the Bay Area, property values and rents are high in
Hayward. However, they are lower in Hayward than in most coastal parts of
the Bay area; you can find cheaper housing than in Hayward by moving inland,
or to high crime areas.
Hayward contains a campus of the California
State University System;
Cal State East Bay, formerly Cal State Hayward. The campus is located atop
the part of the Hayward Hills closest to the bay, and lacks a direct connection
to the freeway system. Hayward also contains
Chabot College, a campus of the California Community College system.
Due to money problems, Hayward’s school system is currently (2005) at risk of
being taken over by the state of California.
Transportation
Although Hayward is on the San Francisco Bay, its shore is largely
wetlands, and water transportation is not currently
a factor. Hayward is connected by
the San Mateo bridge to San Mateo, across the bay on
the San Francisco
Peninsula. Interstate 880 cuts through Hayward
roughly parallel to both the bay and the coast range. The BART makes two
stops within Hayward. There is
an Amtrak station, and a Greyhound station. For the rich and powerful
there is also a small airport (Hayward Executive Airport).
References
Here are a couple of books about the history of Hayward:
- “Hayward, The Heart of the Bay”, by Banning Fenton (Heritage Media Corp.,
Carlsbad, California, 2002)
- “Hayward, The First 100 Years”, by the Hayward Centennials Committee (Color
Art Press, Oakland, California, 1975)