no more than a bump in the road and was relegated to light industry and warehouses.
Telegraph Hill suffered a less threatening circumstance. Anyone looking at the bare-rock, northeast face of Telegraph Hill might assume that side of the hill had fallen away in an earthquake. Not so. The northeast face of Telegraph Hill lies under North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf, and what once was Yerba Buena Cove. After the soil and sand of the hill was scraped away to reveal bare rock, dynamite was used to blast away the rock. Only when it became too difficult and dangerous did the city give up on leveling that great city landmark.
The Parrott residence on Rincon Hill prior to the Second Street Cut. —Photo courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
Excavating Harrison Street to level the street further divided Rincon Hill. —Photo courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
SAN FRANCISCO’S SAND DUNES AND MARSHLAND
Nearly half of San Francisco was originally covered with sand. Some of the sand formed hills like those obstructing Market Street, some settled into lowlands that became marshland such as in the Mission District, but most comprised what the early settlers called the Great Dunes on the west side. Regardless, none of the land in the city was flat, and its form varied according to locale, weather, and the winds. Blowing sand, both fine and coarse, was a curse to the early residents.
Some of the dunes were barren, but most supported a covering of stunted trees, shrubs, plants, and creepers. San Francisco’s live oaks, dwarfed by the harsh conditions, never reached their potential. The few pines, spruce, and cypress trees grew nearly horizontal on the west side of the city. There were no wooded areas in the city such as can now be found at the Presidio or in Golden Gate Park. These were all planted in the late nineteenth century. Many native plants existed nowhere else and are now near extinction, maintaining a toehold in the Lobos Creek Dunes and Valley as a part of the Presidio Trust. Some, like San Francisco’s long-gone “Shelly Cocoas,” were just plain fun.
SHELLY COCOAS
Walter J. Thompson, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote an article titled “Out Where the ‘Shelly-Cocoas’ Grew,” published in the September 24, 1916, edition. He bemoaned the loss of the native plant habitat from the perspective of his childhood. The term “Shelly Cocoas” must have been a name assigned to the plant by the locals since no record can be found of a plant by that name. Given the description, it’s most likely the wild cucumber or more specifically the California manroot, Marah fabaceus, native to San Francisco.
Out Where the “Shelly-Cocoas” Grew
—by Walter J. Thompson
Just by way of a foreword, I would say that I spell it “shelly-cocoa” advisedly. I don’t admit it is correct. I could show how “shelly-coke” has the backing of authority of weight, but refrain, and maintain that the official orthographical architecture of the word is one of the secrets of boyhood that must be considered inviolate, no matter how old one grows. Wild horses shall not tear it from me. Boyhood’s trust and all that it implies is involved.
Also I remark that I am confirmed in the opinion that shelly-cocoas have ceased to exist, like the ichthyosaurus and other things with even worse names belonging to those dear old days before the Pleiades sisters were transformed into stars.
To the old boys of the old town it is not necessary to hold up a shelly-cocoa for identification purposes. We all remember what it looked like, and recall with thrills of joy and pride the days when the city was a kiddy, like ourselves in short pants, and freckled with a magnificent profusion of vacant spaces on its thinly settled slopes, said spaces being the homes of the shelly-cocoa vines. They shared the soil with lupine bushes and stunted oaks, spreading in green patches six and seven feet in size. Every fellow’s home had a shelly-cocoa patch annex of varying size, according to location, and out beyond Van Ness Avenue they could be measured off by the acre, until human habitations were not and King Shelly-Cocoa reigned monarch of all he surveyed.
The fruit of the shelly-cocoa vine could have been designed by kind Mother Nature for no other purpose than as an implement of amusement for youth, even as marbles and pegtops. Was there anything more alluring to the eye of a boy than that light green sphere, covered with spines about half an inch long, ranging from an inch and a half to three inches in diameter, the spines, while not stiff or particularly sharp, being full of electricity, which only required contact with the human skin to complete a circuit of radiating thrills and spasms?
And what an exquisite soft, soapy and sticky lather was concealed within the bulb, with an odor which, if not exactly comparable with the spirit of fragrance wafting over the rose-strewn Vale of Cashmere, was markedly of a distinctive character. The shelly-cocoa served a double purpose. When acting in conjunction with a human chin or eye, it titillated the nerves with its electric thrills, and at the same time stirred the tissue of one’s olfactory organ to a frenzy of revolt against its atmospherical environment.
Shelly-cocoas and war whoops! They went together in the brave days of yore. The taint of war was in the air. Around the family table the battles of the Rebellion were discussed in detail, and the current literature of boydom told of little else but blood-curdling encounters between painted Indians with uncurbed ambitions, to acquire scalps of palefaces and scouts and trappers whose business in life was to roam around the boundless plains, staked and otherwise, and circumvent the cunning of the predatory savages and tear from their ruthless clutches certain comely damsels who had been nabbed while plucking wildflowers upon the prairie.
To the young San Franciscan this Indian warfare was most appealing, its methods of bang and batter and of direct attack and defense being more understandable than the maneuvering of troops in accordance with a military manual. Many and great were the battles fought on the hillsides where the shellycocoas grew, with the spiny bulbs as weapons. King Philip of Pocanoket never displayed more cunning and daring in hurling big Wampanoags through the New England settlements, nor the redoubtable Captain Church more dexterity in chasing them, than did the hillside warriors in factional strife. Confined as it was to the northern side of the city, owing to the refusal of the shelly-cocoas to propagate in the red-rock soil of the Mission, the warfare was between the settlers of the downtown district and the upland Indians. The line of demarcation was the ridge about the line of Jones Street, but the street was not entirely cut through then. Along this frontier were numerous nifty lots sloping down from Washington to Pacific Street. There the tide of war ebbed and flowed.
The downtown Pilgrim Fathers were in big majority, but the Wampanoags of the hills were the best fighters. They had a King Philip, too, in “Ducksy” McGinn, who was mighty in courage and strength. “Ducksy” would plan his campaigns with exceeding care. Preliminary to a planned conflict, every shelly-cocoa patch for blocks around was denuded of its fruit, and arsenals would be established in certain secret spots. Then would the enemy be taunted into attack by certain well-understood methods of aggravation. When the Pilgrims charged up that hill the wily Wampanoags led them along their own trails, and soon would have the Pilgrims in a disastrous ambush. Every shelly-cocoa vine was bare and the air was clouded with the volleys which the Wampanoags sent in. The Pilgrims could not even follow the well-known Beadle movement, “and seeing the enemy approach, he hid behind a tree.” There were no trees. They could only run.
It was on the slope running up from Pacific Street at Leavenworth
