Most Bay Area drivers know the Caldecott Tunnel as that familiar squeeze on Highway 24 — the dark stretch between Oakland and the East Bay suburbs where traffic either starts moving or completely falls apart.
But the tunnel’s story is much stranger than its commuter reputation suggests. It has a forgotten predecessor perched higher in the hills, a grand opening that looked more like a festival than a road project, a daily lane-reversal ritual that lasted for decades, and fossils from an ancient seafloor hidden inside the Berkeley Hills.
1. It Wasn’t Originally Called the Caldecott Tunnel
When the tunnel first opened in 1937, it was called the Broadway Low Level Tunnel — not the Caldecott Tunnel. The name changed in 1960 to honor Thomas E. Caldecott, a former Berkeley mayor.
And the tunnel Bay Area drivers know today is really a complex built in stages: the first two bores opened in 1937, the third in 1964, and the fourth in 2013, according to 511 Contra Costa…