1916
- During a parade on Preparedness Day, prior to entry into World War I, a suitcase bomb detonates, killing ten and wounding forty, the worst such attack in San Francisco's history
- Buena Vista Cafe opens in San Francisco on the first floor of a boardinghouse converted into a saloon
- Thomaso Castagnola opens the first crab stand on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, selling fresh crab to passersby
- Writer Jack London (pictured) dies at his ranch on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain
- Chevrolet's Oakland Assembly opens, their first automobile manufacturing plant on the West Coast of the United States
- Fageol Motors is founded in Oakland
- University of California, Berkeley establishes the first program in the US for the study of criminal justice, headed by Berkeley police chief August Vollmer