Berkeley, a Look Back: Dense fog engulfs Bay Area on Thanksgiving 1925

"A thick blanket of fog greeted Thanksgiving in Berkeley today, the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported a century ago on Nov. 26, 1925. At an early hour this morning, the grey mists stole into the city, and when daylight dawned familiar landmarks were blotted from view. Only the faint outline of the Berkeley hills could be discerned. The fog is declared to be the most dense of the season and has engulfed the entire bay region."

"One of them was an outdoor service in the natural amphitheatre of the Berkeley hills, near the eucalyptus grove back of the summit of the Big C hill. Dean William Frederic Bade conducted the Out-Door Thanksgiving service this morning for the members of the Sierra Club and their friends. Bade, from the Pacific School of Religion, delivered what the Gazette called a glittering address on Nature and God and read extensively from a first-century B.C. manuscript written in Alexandria, Egypt."

"To Berkeleyans as to the whole world, Berkeley is known as a community radiating prosperity, the Gazette rather smugly declared. There are no slums, no dark and dreary tenements, no great foreign colonies, no apparent poverty. And yet almost within the shadow of the Campanile there are families where misfortunate (sic) has a stranglehold. Here and there a widowed mother working hard day-by-day to keep her children in school. Not children in rags and tatters, no organized agencies operating through the Community Chest prevent that."

Thick grey fog enveloped Berkeley on Thanksgiving morning, blotting familiar landmarks and leaving only the faint outline of the hills; the fog was declared the densest of the season across the bay. Thanksgiving activities continued, including an outdoor service in the natural amphitheatre of the Berkeley hills with readings from a first-century B.C. Alexandria manuscript. Churches held at least a dozen services, and a Presbyterian sermon affirmed God, rather than nature or man, as the source of blessings. Despite a reputation for prosperity and absence of slums, pockets of hardship existed near the Campanile, and community agencies fed 150 undernourished children turkey dinners.

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