The Port of Oakland was the first major port on the Pacific Coast of the United States to build terminals for container ships. It is now the fourth busiest container port in the United States; behind Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Newark.
Originally, the estuary, 500 feet wide, had a depth of two feet at mean low tide. In 1852, the year of Oakland's incorporation as a town by the California State Legislature, large shipping wharves were constructed along the Oakland Estuary, which was dredged to create a viable shipping channel. 22 years later, in 1874, the previously dredged shipping channel was deepened to make Oakland a deep water port. The project in 1921 dug a channel thirty feet deep at mean low water from the bay to Brooklyn Basin, a distance of four and three quarters miles, and then a channel twenty-five feet deep around the basin and eighteen feet to San Leandro Bay, an added distance of four miles. However, the port was not officially named the Port of Oakland until 1927, under the leadership of the newly-organized Board of Port Commissioners. Under the rivers and harbors act of 1922, the project produced the channel thirty feet deep and eight hundred feet wide through the shoal south of Yerba Buena Island narrowing to six hundred feet at the end of the Oakland jetties, widening of the estuary channel to six hundred feet to Webster street, dredging of the south channel basin to thirty feet and a turning basin, then thirty feet to Park street, at a cost to the federal government of six million dollars
In 1962, the Port of Oakland began to admit container ships. Container traffic greatly increased the amount of cargo loaded and unloaded in the Port: by the late 1960s, the Port of Oakland was the second largest port in the world in container tonnage. However, depth and navigation restrictions in San Francisco Bay limited its capacity, and by the late 1970s it had been supplanted by the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach as the major container port on the West Coast.
However, in the early 2000s, severe congestion at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach caused some trans-Pacific shippers to move some of their traffic over to Oakland (especially if the final destination is not in Southern California but lies farther east). Also, the Port is now reaping the benefits of investment in post-panamax cranes, dredging, and the transfer of military property, which has now been used for expansion.
In addition to its maritime activities, the Port also operates Oakland International Airport.