History of Pinole, CA

The history of Pinole, CA is unusually easy to summarise, because the town has only ever had three engines: a land grant, a wharf, and a motorway. Everything standing in Old Town belongs to the middle one.

Where the name comes from

The name comes from a meal, not a person. In the early 1700s a Spanish commandant, Don Pedro Fages, led an expedition north from Monterey through what is now Contra Costa County. His soldiers ran out of provisions and were fed by a village of Ohlone people, who gave them a ground meal of acorns, seeds and wild grain. The Spanish called it pinole — from the Aztec pinolli, meaning ground and toasted grain — and named their camp El Pinole after it. The town kept the name.

Rancho El Pinole

Rancho El Pinole was the land grant that fixed the shape of the whole area: 17,761 acres along the Carquinez Strait, granted to Ygnacio Martínez, commandant of the Presidio of San Francisco. It covered ground that today holds not only Pinole but Crockett, Hercules, Martinez, Rodeo, Selby and Tormey.

In 1824 Martínez built his first adobe hacienda about three miles inland from San Pablo Bay, on the ground that is now Pinole Valley Park. After the Mexican-American War the grant was confirmed under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and patented to his heirs in 1868. In 1865 and 1867 the Tormey brothers bought 9,000 acres of it between them, and John Tormey's western half became Pinole.

The wharf and the Fernandez family

The wharf and the Fernandez family are the same story. In the 1850s Bernardo Fernandez, a Portuguese immigrant, started a trading facility on the bay. By 1882 he owned four large warehouses and five acres of waterfront; by 1894 more than 3,000 acres; and eventually more than 20,000 across Pinole, Oakland and San Francisco. His 22-room mansion still stands at the end of Tennent Avenue.

Two more dates completed the town. The Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1878, the same year the first post office opened, and the California Powder Works began operating next door in Hercules in 1879, running until the 1970s. Pinole incorporated as a city on 25 June 1903.

What the town looked like in 1915

What the town looked like in 1915 would surprise anyone who sees it quiet today. Old Town held a wharf, a post office, a newspaper — The Pinole Weekly Times — a school, several hotels and saloons, two churches, the Pinole Opera House, the Pinole Theatre, a bakery, a butcher and the Bank of Pinole.

Pinole today

Pinole today counts 19,022 residents at the 2020 census, on the east side of San Francisco Bay in western Contra Costa County. It sits roughly 30 miles north-east of San Francisco and 20 miles north of Oakland, on Interstate 80 — the third engine, and the one that explains why most people pass through rather than stop. Pinole Creek still runs through Fernandez Park to the bay.

Compiled August 2026 from the City of Pinole's history pages and Historic Walking Tour, and public records of the Rancho El Pinole grant. Population from the 2020 United States census.