The I-880 Cypress Freeway Replacement Project affects cultural resources along the San Francisco Bay in West Oakland. In 1869, West Oakland became the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad. Passenger, freight and local trains all passed through West Oakland to the Long Wharf and "Mole" jutting into the bay. There, passengers and freight were loaded and unloaded for and from travel across the bay and across the Pacific. A majority of West Oakland's residents were affiliated with the railroad. Most had come from the eastern U.S. and many from across the Atlantic. The Oakland these people lived in was unlike cities of the east coast and Europe. This paper presents an historic context for Oakland, a typical "new" city of the 19th-century Pacific Rim. Vast spaces, large capital investments and new technology created an Urban West which had a rail terminus and port in West Oakland.