Travel - Only a Paddle Away

Tiny Brooks Island Beckons with Adventure

By Giny Prior

Next time you’re sitting in monster traffic at the Bay Bridge toll plaza, think about this. There’s an island in San Francisco Bay with just two human inhabitants. Accessible only by boat, it’s a windswept spit of land that just beckons to be explored—and it can be, with a guided tour through the East Bay Regional Parks.

I’ve been to Brooks Island by kayak, paddling across the sheltered waters of Richmond Harbor, and by motorboat. The motorboat was cheating, but I was in a hurry and grabbed a ride with the island’s caretakers. Kayaking is the way to go; it allows you to glide quietly across the water, much like the Native Americans who lived on Brooks centuries ago.

The park district owns the island today, but it wasn’t always that way. Its original inhabitants were Indians, who found an abundance of fish and game on the land. Their shell mounds and burial sites go back some 2,500 years and are protected today. As the Europeans arrived, they saw another treasure on Brooks Island—rocks. A quarry was started, and prisoners were ferried to Brooks to break up the stones and ship them back to help build San Quentin. The quarry remains evident today, as you stand on the rocky bluffs and look down to the pit below.

In the 1960s, Bing Crosby and Trader Vic opened a gun club on Brooks Island, bringing pals over to shoot the abundant waterfowl that nested on the island and flew overhead. They reportedly burned the brush more than a few times to flush out the game birds, but waterfowl weren’t their only targets. Fine restaurant china has been found on the island, some with gold rims and insignias from San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. Of course, gun casings turn up on the island as well.

You learn all this and more on this amazing little island. But history is only part of the tour. Brooks is the park district’s only wildlife sanctuary, and it’s a haven for migrating birds and other animals. In spring, wildflowers abound, and native plants flourish in summer. It makes for a pretty pallet as you take it all in on your two-mile hike around the island.

But just imagine living here yearround. Roy Tedder and Heather Hailey do. They’re the caretakers, who live their lives by the tides, which they check daily before heading ashore to do chores. Groceries and laundry, propane and more get transported by motorboat from the Richmond Marina to their modest island home a mile away. A sudden storm, and the couple are stranded, sometimes for days as heavy winds whip the choppy waters. The island turns to a sea of mud, and just keeping the house clean is a monumental effort.

Then there are the nerve-racking moments when the couple gets visitors— unauthorized ones. From kayakers to windsurfers, some folks get downright belligerent when they’re told they need a park district permit to land there. But police have been involved only once, says Hailey, when officers followed up on a threat from a windsurfer. The young tough got a warning and never bothered them again.

As with all islands, debris washes up, and the couple does their best to pick up the waterlogged trash. And, yes, there is the occasional message in a bottle. “Sometimes they’re love notes, romantic poetry, even class science projects,” says Hailey, who tries to answer as many of the notes as she can.

With all the responsibilities on Brooks, it’s hard to believe Hailey is learning a language. It’s pheasant, a little something she’s picking up from one of the island’s oldest inhabitants, Phil, who’s been coming to Brooks to feed for decades. Meeting him is just one of the many surprises you get on your Brooks Island tour. It’s one of the East Bay’s great adventures—and it’s just a paddle away.