In 1868 successful gold miner and dairyman Lester Cooley bought the Ravenswood wharf and more than 400 acres of bay-front property which stretched from present-day University Avenue to Embarcadero Road. He made extensive repairs to the pier, which became known as Cooley's Landing and was used primarily for shipping grain and products from the dairy he established.
But Ravenswood did not see a significant
revival until 1874, when Cooley leased five acres to Hunter, Shackleford
and Company. The firm built a brick factory where Jack Farrell Park is today.
(See map.) That same year Ravenswood
became part of Menlo Park when it incorporated. Cooley was the second mayor
and served until the city was disincorporated. (When Menlo Park reincorporated
in 1927 its boundaries did not extend beyond Middlefield Road.)
The brick factory operated seven kilns, employed up to 100 Chinese laborers, and made as many as 50,000 bricks a day. These were shipped from Cooley's Landing to San Francisco to build the Palace Hotel. The plant's clay pit is still evident in the bowl-shaped contours of the park.
Business looked so promising that a second wharf, Clarke's Landing, was built to the southeast. In later years it became the Palo Alto Yacht Harbor.
But once the hotel was complete business steadily declined, and the factory closed after 10 years. Cooley had died two years earlier during removal of a four-pound cancerous tumor. Ravenswood was abandoned once more, and the Cooleys, Carnduffs and Kavanaughs became the area's only permanent residents.
Photo courtesy of San Mateo County Historical Association