Ashland, a Census Designated Place of some 24,000 residents, is one of several fully urbanized, unincorporated communities of central Alameda County and is named afer the abundant growth of the Oregon Ash tree along the San Lorenzo creek. 

In the 1890’s people could ride an electric street car from Oakland to Hayward via Mission/ E. 14th, passing through orchards and farms in Ashland. By the 1930s, nurseries and greenhouses had replaced most of the farms. Then the nurseries gave way to housing developments as the population boomed after WWII thus leaving Ashland mostly car-dependent.

Like the rest of the unincorporated Eden Area of western Alameda County, Ashland is fully developed and, to the casual observer, looks like it is part of the group of East Bay cities that line the Nimitz and spill out over the hills into the Tri-Valley region. Ashland, though formal attempts at incorporation have taken place in the past, has remained unincorporated and is largely left unimproved, negleted and ignored by the Board of Supervisors of Alameda County.