• Shafter Avenue (renamed in 1907 to honor General William Rufus Shafter)
• Site of the former Oakland, Antioch & Eastern/Sacramento Northern rail yard (40th & Shafter)
• State Route 24 elevated freeway corridor
• Rockridge BART Station and Berkeley Hills Tunnel portal

Shafter takes its name from a 1907 Oakland ordinance that renamed the street running through it — previously a duplicate "2nd Avenue" left over from the city's 1897 annexations — to Shafter Avenue. According to local historian Peter T. Conmy, the change honored General William Rufus Shafter, a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient who later commanded U.S. forces in the Spanish-American War, though Oscar L. Shafter, a city councilman and the general's uncle who also lived in Oakland, has also been named as a possible namesake. By the early 1900s, growth here was tied to the East Bay's electric interurban railways.

The Oakland, Antioch & Eastern Railway — later the Sacramento Northern — built its western operating yard and repair shops directly along Shafter Avenue at 40th Street, and for 45 years the site anchored the line's Oakland freight and streetcar service until the last train ran in February 1957. Shafter Avenue itself remains the area's defining spine, while the elevated tracks of State Route 24 and BART's nearby Rockridge station — briefly considered as "College–Shafter" when planners named it in 1965 — mark the neighborhood's eastern edge today.

From streetcar yard to transit corridor, Shafter's history has always run along the routes passing through it. A tee bearing the neighborhood's name honors that layered history — an everyday marker for a small, quiet stretch of Oakland with an outsized transportation legacy.