1119 Alice Street
Unlike my other example from this year, this mark has the date inside the stamp, although I needed to use my fingers to identify it.
1932 – Rasmussen Co.
26 January 20261913 – Jepsen Bros.
16 January 2026
1537 Carleton Street, Berkeley
I include this mark for three reasons: first, it’s a variant of the 1913 mark with a dash, rather than a slash, between the month and year. Second, it’s a replacement for my original 1913 Jepsen Bros. mark, which was destroyed long ago. And third, just to highlight this stretch of Carleton, which is full of good old early 1900s stamps, including some that I don’t document because they don’t appear anywhere in Oakland. Anyone setting out to thoroughly cover Berkeley the same way I’ve done Oakland would do well to start here.
1912 – Burnham Co.
14 January 2026
2630 California Street, Berkeley
The third date I’ve found for this particular maker, “Burnham Co.” as opposed to “C. B. Burnham.”
Out of town: New Orleans, Louisiana
5 January 2026New Orleans has a lively streetscape, which you see a lot of because you need to watch your step in the old central city. This is a sampling of what’s there, gathered casually during a recent stay. I did not see any concrete sidewalk stamps, but they do exist.
This beautiful water meter box cover was designed by the manufacturer to replace the classic version first introduced in 1921. (The classic version serves as the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board‘s logo.) The little dome covers an antenna that transmits data to the meter readers.
A sewer cleanout cover installed by the Sewerage and Water Board, which was established in 1899.
New Orleans Public Service, Inc. was in charge of power, gas and transit from the 1920s to the 1980s, when the transit segment was taken over by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (the RTA) and the power and gas segment became Entergy New Orleans. Today the NOPSI Hotel occupies its old headquarters near City Hall.
This would be the Western Union Telegraph Company.
I’m striking out on CELP Co.
Same thing with E. E. Co.
Don’t know what PTC Co. is or was.
Finally, DRAIN lids are everywhere, along with WATER and SEWER lids.
Out of town: El Paso, Texas
1 January 2026
I had about an hour to walk around downtown from the El Paso train station. The sidewalk stamp right outside was the only one I found, but there was plenty of street stuff. J.A.R. Concrete did business for 65 years, but went bankrupt in 2023.
El Paso Foundry & Machine dates back to the 1890s, but I can’t find anything about its current existence.
It seems like an interesting city, and a fellow passenger, an El Paso native coming back for a visit, praised it to the skies.
Out of town: Salinas, California
30 December 2025
All I know of Salinas is what I saw at the train station, where the Coast Starlight stopped for a “fresh air break” for all the smokers to light up. The Amtrak station appears to have been renovated, and it has a little rail museum. Plus this mark, dated August 2020. Cen-Cal Construction is a modest sized firm, without a website, that was founded in 2011.
Sidewalk maker: J. Henry Harris
29 November 2025
1736 Franklin Street
John Henry Harris (1902-1978) was a Berkeley-based grading and excavating contractor during the mid-century years, not so much a sidewalk contractor, but here’s a single, very obscure example of his stamp in Oakland. Other stamps survive in Alameda.
Harris was born and raised in the Sierra foothills. He’s listed in the city directories from 1924 to 1943, but this stamp and other sources show he was active until liquidating in the early 1960s. He lived at several Berkeley addresses during those years, first with his wife Billie (1908-1961) and their three children and later with second wife Mabel (1903-1992). He had a brickyard down near the foot of University Avenue at Third and Bancroft. During the late 1940s he advertised paving services as well as grading. In the 1950s he did a lot of demolition work.
Harris wasn’t totally obscure; he was head of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce in 1952-53 and fulfilled contracts in the north Bay as well as locally.
My thanks to Ken Zinns for spotting and sharing this mark.
Oakland Underfoot 