Oak Park is a neighborhood in Sacramento, California. The McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific Sacramento Campus, Sacramento High School, and Christian Brothers High School are located in this neighborhood.
Oak Park is informally bounded by U.S. Route 50 to the north, Stockton Boulevard to the east, the South Sacramento (99) Freeway to the west, and Fruitridge Road to the south. It is within city limits and provides easy access to Downtown Sacramento. Numbered streets intersect with numbered avenues, with Broadway and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (formerly known as Sacramento Boulevard) comprising the main thoroughfares.
History
The early 1900s saw Oak Park as a culturally-thriving and economically-vibrant destination neighborhood, partly due to its strong sense of community and its ties with and proximity to the historic site of the California State Fairgrounds. Oak Park was originally home to many Caucasians of European descent. The neighborhoods were very well-developed and prosperous due to the many businesses in the area. However, Oak Park could never fully recover due to the effects of the Great Depression compounded by discriminatory practices. Before World War II, like many cities, Oak Park experienced redlining, which segregated neighborhoods by race. e.g., in East Oak Park, “Negro families are concentrated between 5th & 8th Aves. on San Jose. Their presence has started active resistance to further infiltration of all subversive elements” (1937). Whites began moving to buy houses elsewhere, diminishing area property values. The 1960s interstate freeway expansion program physically divided many historic Sacramento, CA neighborhoods like Oak Park, creating isolated poverty or relative prosperity areas. Oak Park’s sense of community started to decline in the early 1960s due to the freeway expansion, declining property values and families moving out to the suburban communities now made easily accessible to them by the freeway expansion. During the 1980s and 1990s, further deterioration of the living standards was exacerbated by frequent occurrences of petty theft, street crime, drug activities, and gang-related violence. EZ Sacramento Junk Removal
Recently, the early 2000s saw a slew of real estate speculators and building contractors buying up low-priced homes in some parts of Oak Park that were either abandoned or sold off as unmanageable, turning them around and reselling them as reasonably priced starter homes, often with financial government assistance. At the same time, many new high-paying jobs moved into the area in connection with the expansion of the University of California Davis Medical Center, located to the north of Oak Park; the revitalization of Broadway and Stockton Boulevard; and the expansion of the McGeorge School of Law campus. Former Mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson founded the St. Hope Company, which started helping the charter school system in the area as well, carrying out various projects, including the construction of apartments and improvements to the area’s public buildings. In addition, there have been recurring annual events in Oak Park, like the Sacramento Asian Pacific Film Festival, Oak Park Farmers Market, Sacramento Black Book Fair, and Day of the Dead Oak Park.
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