Alameda County Biographies

WALTER R. RIDEOUT

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 

	Walter R. Rideout, who enjoys recognition as one of the leading and enterprising 
business men of Oakland, has won merited success as president of the W. R. Rideout Company, 
engaged in general transportation. His birth occurred in Oak Valley, California, on the 11th 
of July, 1867, his parents being J. R. and Alvira Rideout.
	In 1869 the family home was established in Marysville, Yuba county, and there our 
subject pursued his education until eleven years of age, when his parents removed to San 
Francisco, where he attended the public schools until a youth of sixteen. Subsequently he 
became a fireman in the employ of his father, who owned a river steamer, and later acted as 
engineer and then as pilot, being the only man holding an engineer's and pilot's license at 
the age of twenty-one. He served as pilot on the steamer Alvira until 1893 and afterward acted 
as pilot of the steamer Trilby for a year and a half or until his father sold it to the 
Sacramento Transportation Company. He next served as pilot on the Pride of the River for a 
year and afterward built the steamer Fort Bragg, which he ran for two years and then sold to 
the Sacramento Transportation Company. Subsequently he joined his brother, E. V. Rideout, for 
the conduct of a shipping and transportation business in San Francisco, and in 1910 Walter R. 
Rideout came to Oakland to establish the trans-bay shipping end of the business, organizing a 
separate company of which he became president. The company in Oakland is known as the W. R. 
Rideout Company and does a general transportation business, operating three steamers, two 
barges and one tug boat. Walter R. Rideout is the first man to make the transportation business 
a success in Oakland.
	The following is an excerpt from a publication called Greater Oakland, published in 1911: 
"One of the most progressive and largest concerns of its kind in Alameda county is the W. R. 
Rideout Company, whose big warehouse and yards are located on the water�front at the foot of 
Webster street. The business was established about five years ago, and under the able management 
of its hustling and progressive president, Walter R. Rideout, it has steadily grown to its present 
proportions. In 1910 Mr. Rideout established the trans-bay shipping end of the business, and the 
company is now in a position to handle the biggest contracts for the transportation of freight 
between San Francisco and Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley. The concern operates the following 
freight boats: the Alviso, one hundred and fifty tons, and the Juliette, four hundred tons. About 
a year ago, following out its policy of doing everything possible to increase the efficiency of 
its service, the company inaugurated the use of auto-trucks for deliveries, and up to date have 
purchased six of these big trucks, which means the investment of nearly thirty thousand dollars 
for autos alone. The company gives employment to some seventy-two men, and the annual pay roll 
amounts to fifty-one thousand, two hundred dollars, which adds materially to the general 
prosperity of Oakland. The concern transfer from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and 
seventy-five tons of freight per day, doing more business than all the rest of the transfer 
companies combined. The warehouse, which is situated directly on the water front, with excellent 
shipping facilities, is three hundred and fifty feet long by seventy-five feet wide. In addition 
to the auto-truck service, the company operate about fifteen teams. The company practically 
controls the trans-bay freighting business, doing all the work of the Pacific Hardware Company, 
Dunham, Carrigan & Hayden, Lally & Company, Holbrook, Merrill & Stetson, Haas Brothers, N. O. 
Nelson, Whittier-Coburn & Company, Bass-Hueter Paint Company, N. R. Nason, Sherwin-Williams 
Company, Wellman-Peck Com�pany, J. H. Newbauer, Sussman-Wormser Company, Tillmann & Bendel, L. T. 
Snow, M. Getz, Getz Brothers, Hooper & Jennings, A. P. Hotaling, Italian-Swiss Colony Wine Company 
and hundreds of others. Walter R. Rideout, the congenial head of this concern, is one of the best 
known and most popular business men in the city. He is a man of generous proportions and big ideas. 
While shrewd and energetic in business matters, all those who know him find in him a good fellow, 
generous to a fault and a stanch friend."
	In politics Mr. Rideout is a republican, while in religious faith he is a Protestant. He 
is a valued member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Trade and also belongs to the 
Woodmen of the World. His fellow townsmen recognize his merit and ability and his business 
colleagues and contemporaries entertain the warmest admiration for his many good qualities.

Past & Present of Alameda County, California � Vol II, S. J. Clarke Publ. Co., 1914, p. 310