Richmond Wedding

Richmond was founded and incorporated in 1905, carved out of the Rancho San Pablo, from which the nearby town of San Pablo has inherited its name. Until 1919 the city had the largest winery in the world and the small but abandoned village of Winehaven remains fenced off along Western Drive in the Point Molate Area. In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was active in the city. In 1930 the Ford Motor Company opened an assembly plant in the south side of town; this is now an abandoned industrial area. The plant moved to Milpitas in the 1970s. The city was a small town at that time, until the onset of World War II which brought on a rush of migrants and a boom in the industrial sector. Standard Oil set up operations here in 1901, including a refinery and tank farm, which are still operated by Chevron. There is a pier into San Francisco Bay south of Point Molate for oil tankers. The western terminus of the Santa Fe Railroad was established in Richmond with ferry connections at Ferry Point in the Brickyard Cove area of Point Richmond to San Francisco.