This bridge was built around 1911 by the East Bay Electric Lines, a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railway, to allow Rose Street to pass over its California Street Line. The California Street Line ran from the Oakland Mole, where the ferries left for San Francisco, along Stanford Street and California Street and under this bridge. From here it followed Monterey Avenue and Colusa Avenue and ended at Solano Avenue. The station at the end of the line was called Thousand Oaks, and the Wye track that was used to turn the train around was called the Solano Wye. Red Trains consisting of one or two electric interurban cars were operated on the track until 1926.
Starting in 1926 Key System trains used the track. The California Street Line was abandoned in 1932 allowing houses to be built on California Street north and south of the bridge. The Key System’s Sacramento Street Line was also nearby. It ran north on Sacramento Street, went through the middle of the block at the north end of the bridge, crossed the California Street Line, went through what is now the nursery property and then followed Hopkins Street. You can tell a lot about where the Sacramento Street Line went if you look at the lot lines on Google Maps. Some of the planter beds at the nursery were laid out while the track was still active and show up in satellite view. The back of the building at 1590 Hopkins, where the liquor store is now, was built with a curved back wall to follow the track.
After the demise of the California Street Line, the Sacramento Street Line was rerouted onto Monterey Avenue instead of Hopkins Street. The end of the line was at the corner of Monterey Avenue and Colusa Avenue. When the Bay Bridge opened in November 1936, its entire lower deck was devoted to trains. The Sacramento Street Line was extended to run over the new bridge to San Francisco and was renamed the H Line.
In 1958, when buses replaced the trains on the Bay Bridge, the H Line became the H bus and a duplex was built at 1330/1332 California Street on the old H Line right-of-way.