Before it was anyone's square, this was railroad country. The Southern Pacific ran along Embarcadero West while the Western Pacific claimed Third Street, and between the two railroads a warehouse district took shape along the estuary. Cargo moved, workers labored, and the waterfront earned the kind of roughness that a young Jack London -- oyster pirate, sailor, adventurer -- found irresistible. He frequented Heinold's saloon in the 1890s, years before his novels made him famous. On May 1, 1951, decades after London's death, the city formally dedicated the area between Broadway, Webster, First Street, and the estuary in his honor. A plaque was placed at the foot of Broadway, and a working-class waterfront gained a literary patron saint.

Jack London Square collects unlikely artifacts the way a curiosity shop might. A reconstructed log cabin sits near the waterfront -- the actual cabin where London lived during the Klondike Gold Rush, dismantled in the Yukon and reassembled here. At an adjacent slip, the USS Potomac rides the gentle swell of the estuary. Franklin Roosevelt's presidential yacht, a 165-foot vessel where FDR hosted dignitaries and went fishing, served the Navy after his death before eventually settling in Oakland as a floating museum. The juxtaposition is pure Oakland: a gold rush relic, a presidential yacht, and a saloon with a crooked floor, all within a few hundred yards of each other.

Perhaps the most startling thing about Jack London Square is that freight trains still run through it. A mainline railroad threads down the center of Embarcadero West at a cautious fifteen miles per hour, sharing the pavement with cars, buses, cyclists, and pedestrians. BNSF and Union Pacific locomotives rumble past outdoor restaurant patios. Amtrak's Capitol Corridor and Coast Starlight services stop at the Jack London Square station, built in 1994 to replace the old 16th Street station damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The sight of a full-length passenger train gliding through a restaurant district at walking speed is surreal enough that visitors sometimes stop eating to stare.

The Loma Prieta earthquake reshaped more than the train station. When the landmark Tribune Tower in downtown Oakland sustained damage, the Oakland Tribune relocated its operations to Jack London Square, staying from 1989 to 1996. KTVU, the Bay Area's Fox affiliate, has broadcast from studios at the square since 1958 -- one of the longest-tenured businesses on the waterfront. Around them, the neighborhood has layered on jazz clubs, ramen shops, kayak outfitters, and a farmers market without quite shedding its industrial bones. Former Governor Jerry Brown lived here during his stint as Oakland's mayor before moving to the Uptown neighborhood. The surrounding area, now called the Jack London District, has seen loft conversions fill old warehouses, but the trains still come, the ferries still run to San Francisco, and the saloon floor still tilts.

Modern Jack London Square faces the estuary with public plazas and an accessible waterfront designed by landscape architects SWA Group. Across the water, Alameda stretches out low and flat. Ferry service connects the square to San Francisco, and the possibility of a future BART station or aerial tramway linking to downtown Oakland has been discussed for years. But the square's real appeal lies in its refusal to choose a single identity. It is simultaneously a transit hub, a dining destination, a historic site, and a working waterfront where container ships pass within view of weekend brunch crowds. Jack London -- who was never much for sitting still -- would probably approve of the restlessness.