depth. Fashioning a floating platform, with a chain operated rake suspended below, Von Schmidt’s team scraped the remaining fragments off Blossom Rock and finally achieved the required clearance.
Shag Rocks (1 and 2) and Arch Rock were dealt with after Blossom Rock and were reduced to thirty feet below the surface in 1900. In 1903, Blossom Rock was further reduced to match Shag Rocks and Arch Rock at thirty feet. As ships became larger and drew a deeper draft, additional toppings were required. On August 31, 1932, Blossom Rock was lowered again to forty-two feet below the mean level of low water.
Mission Rock, once proudly standing guard over Mission Bay, suffered a different fate. A convenient anchoring point off the bay, it became a dumping place for tons of ballast, which over the years added measurably to its size. Eventually covered with warehouses and a pier, the China Basin fill encroached on Mission Bay, to within a few hundred yards of the rock. At the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. Navy disputed ownership by the Mission Rock Company. After thirty-eight years of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court awarded ownership to the Navy. The Navy then decided they didn’t want the island and transferred ownership to Board of State Harbor Commissioners for just under $10,000.
In 1946, plans were made to extend Pier 50 to encompass Mission Rock, creating a super terminal for shipping. The remaining buildings on the island were burned in a massive fire that could be seen from as far as Oakland, and the terminal was built as planned. Mission Rock still exists, but only as a stepping-stone.
Treasure Island remains the exception to the rule. It represents an island built where none existed before. San Francisco wanted to celebrate its two new bridges by hosting the 1939 World Fair but had no suitable land available on which to locate it. The decision made in 1935 to use the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for access to the fair with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge seemed a natural. The island was to be built on the shoals just north of Yerba Buena Island.
Construction began in early 1936. A series of piles and cofferdams surrounded a four hundred-acre rectangular area. Hydraulic dredging began, but in reverse of the normal method. Instead of removing material, the dredging added it, pumping the bay silt, sand and gravel into the form. The name Treasure Island related to the fill itself, washed down from the gold fields of the Sierra as well as referring to the glitter to be found at the fair. It required twenty-nine million cubic yards of fill dredged from the bay and the Sacramento River Delta as well as fifty thousand cubic yards of loam laid on top after the salt was leached from the fill. Nearly two hundred sixty thousand tons of rock were used to create the containment wall around the island.
By 1938, Treasure Island took shape and before the fill was even dry, the buildings and facilities of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition sprouted on the island. A causeway connected Treasure Island to Yerba Buena Island, and in 1939, the fair opened on schedule.
The island was intended to house the San Francisco International Airport after the fair, but World War II intervened. Following the fair, San Francisco traded Treasure Island to the Navy for the land in San Bruno where San Francisco airport now resides. Treasure Island became a naval air base and training center. The year 1993 saw the island returned to the City of San Francisco for civilian use.
THE FILLING OF THE BAY AND THE ABANDONED GOLD RUSH FLEET
The story of early San Francisco is partly a tale of ships coming to anchor in Yerba Buena Cove. The passengers disembarked, the crew offloaded the cargo and then the sailors skulked off to the gold fields to seek their fortunes. The ships rode up and down with the tides, their captains unable to recruit a crew. Eventually, the ships settled into the mud, locked in its grip, never to sail again. Over a short time so many ships lay abandoned that handling newly arriving ships became increasingly difficult. Wharfs were extended between and beyond the abandoned ships, but it was soon realized the best solution would be filling around and over the permanently anchored fleet, extending the eastern edge of San Francisco. That’s the story; it’s just not the whole story.
In 1848, before the gold madness, and just after California became a United States possession, Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny, military representative in San Francisco, granted the city ownership of water lots in Yerba Buena Cove. At that time, the tides of the bay ran all the way up to the intersection of Montgomery and First streets. On the south end of the cove, General Kearny added Fremont, Beale, and Front streets to the plan. On the north side, he added Sansome, Battery, and Front streets. Green Street was to extend about five hundred feet into the bay to meet the new Front Street on the north end, with Rincon Point as the southern terminus of the new grant. Proceeds from the sale of water lots went into city, federal, and, later, state coffers.
Abandoned ships in San Francisco Harbor—1849. —Photo courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
Water lots—land parcels that purportedly resided between the high and low water marks—offered an opportunity to build wharves and stores out onto the bay tidelands. The reality was that many of these never saw less than eighteen feet of water. The same plan existed for the Mission Bay area to the south, with the extension of Brannon and Bryant streets through it. Many an investor made a fortune buying these lots and later selling them for immense profits after the Gold Rush began in earnest. James Lick, piano maker and entrepreneur, joined this early crowd. Profits from later land sales, plus his other ventures, quickly made him one of San Francisco’s wealthiest men.
Map of known and suspected locations of ships buried under the Financial District. —Courtesy of Ron Filion
South Beach, located just below Rincon Point, paralleled the fate of Yerba Buena Cove. Boat builders and fishermen bought up the original lots but soon developers bought them out to use for industrial sites and shipping.
Ships abandoned in Yerba Beuna Cove, San Francisco, 1849–1850. —Library of Congress
Suddenly, San Francisco had its own Manifest Destiny—move east. The city and the new state of California recognized the opportunity to gain revenue by selling additional water lots. Within a year, the Front Street property owners were land-locked and two years beyond that the next group locked out the latter. Regardless, each group profited since the city found itself crowded on the northeast corner of the peninsula. Developing west meant dealing with the hills and the dunes. The city marched eastward into the bay.
Yerba Beuna Cove from Telegraph Hill, ca. 1848. —Library of Congress
Map of San Francisco in 1853—The map identifies buildings, roads and bay conditions. —Library of Congress
While Mission Bay provided an ideal calm water anchorage, traversing by land from one end to the other, north and south, required a serious westward detour due to the incursion of the low-tide shallows landward. The land area to the south comprised San Francisco’s new heavy industry zone, where water met rail. The steamboats plied the bay and moored there with cattle for the stockyards and slaughterhouses, grain, fruit, and vegetables for the market and restaurants, and raw materials for everything from the gunpowder factory, the lumber mills and the brick yard to the sugar refinery. Steamboats carried away finished goods.
The
