“A thick blanket of fog greeted Thanksgiving in Berkeley today,” the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported a century ago on Nov. 26, 1925. “At an early hour this morning, the grey mists stole into the city, and when daylight dawned familiar landmarks were blotted from view. Only the faint outline of the Berkeley hills could be discerned. The fog is declared to be the most dense of the season and has engulfed the entire bay region.” Berkeley had many Thanksgiving Day activities a year ago. One of them was an outdoor service “in the natural amphitheatre of the Berkeley hills, near the eucalyptus grove back of the summit of the Big C hill. Dean William Frederic Bade conducted the Out-Door Thanksgiving service this morning for the members of the Sierra Club and their friends.” Bade, from the Pacific School of Religion, delivered what the Gazette called a “glittering address on Nature and God” and read extensively from a first-century B. C. manuscript written in Alexandria, Egypt. Elsewhere in Berkeley there were “fireside gatherings of families” and at least 12 Thanksgiving church services. In one of them, at St. John’s Presbyterian Church on College Avenue, the Rev. Stanley Armstrong Hunter declared “that God, not nature nor man, is the source of all blessings.” “To Berkeleyans as to the whole world, Berkeley is known as a community radiating prosperity,” the Gazette rather smugly declared. “There are no slums, no dark and dreary tenements, no great foreign colonies, no apparent poverty. “And yet almost within the shadow of the Campanile there are families where misfortunate (sic) has a stranglehold. Here and there a widowed mother working hard day-by-day to keep her children in school. Not children in rags and tatters, no organized agencies operating through the Community Chest prevent that.” Among community services that Thanksgiving day, 150 “undernourished children” were fed turkey dinners in the University Christian Church at Dana Street and Bancroft Way (a site now part of the UC Berkeley campus). Botanical garden: “As the first step toward the development of larger botanical gardens in Strawberry Canyon, the University of California has decided to erect immediately a new head house, a greenhouse and to fence an area of about six acres against squirrels,” the Gazette reported Nov. 27, 1925. “This is actually the first definite step toward moving the botanical gardens from in front of the Library to the canyon. The grading for the new gardens has started and the improvements will cost approximately $3,500. The new houses are to be placed so that future development will be possible. “The new greenhouse will be 30 by 30 feet and will be of the same construction as those recently erected by the University on Hearst Avenue. The head house will be 15 by 30 feet. An extension of the road leading to the botany gardens in Strawberry Canyon will be necessary, and grading for this is now underway.” Postal growth: Business was so good at Berkeley’s post office in 1925 that the postmaster was planning to put concrete on an extra 40-by-80 foot portion of the “truck yard in the rear of the post office building.” A Nov. 28, 1925, newspaper article said that in addition to the new vehicle space, Berkeley had just finished the “painting of all letter and packages boxes in the city. The former dark green color is giving way to a lighter shade that is termed ‘olive green.’ ” Berkeley at the time had 166 “simple letter boxes” and “107 boxes of three types known as package boxes, combination and letter boxes and storage boxes.” Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2025/11/25/berkeley-a-look-back-dense-fog-engulfs-bay-area-on-thanksgiving-1925/
Berkeley, a Look Back: Dense fog engulfs Bay Area on Thanksgiving 1925
