These are truly lost landmarks, for it’s difficult to even imagine what the city once looked like, given the enormity of change. Tracking that change requires a great deal of map work as well as some imagination.
The Gold Rush of 1849 changed the landscape and shores of San Francisco radically. Within the first few years after the madness began, tidelands and coves were filled in, hills were torn down, marshlands were covered, and streams were diverted to underground runs. Between 1846 and 1856, the face of the peninsula was modified almost beyond recognition. No city ever changed its appearance as quickly as early San Francisco.
John S. Hittell, in A Guide Book to San Francisco, 1888, (The Bancroft Company), wrote,
The site of land upon which the city was built consisted, in 1849, of steep ridges and deep ravines. The nearest level and dry land was at the Mission. The place in its natural condition, was unfit for occupation by a dense population, and immense changes were made by cutting down hills, filling up hollows, and converting the mud flats and anchorage in front of the town, as it then was, into land. The city contains more than four hundred acres of “made ground” and a large part of the business is done where the water stood in 1850. The bay shore then came up west of Sansome Street, California to Jackson and a large ship called the Niantic was drawn up and normally fixed in 1849 on the northwestern corner of Sansome and Clay, a point about half a mile distant from the present waterfront. The change in the level of the ground has amounted in many places to fifty feet, or more, and railroads were built to carry the hills down to the bay. Happy Valley, Spring Valley, and St. Ann’s Valley were destroyed by transporting the hills that enclosed them or by raising the level of the low ground. Spring Valley was at the northeastern corner of Taylor and Clay Streets and was at least fifty feet below the present level. A little spring there was claimed, with the idea that by digging, enough water could be obtained to supply the city, in the days when the fluid was brought from Sausalito in a water-boat and peddled around at twenty-five-cents a bucket from water carts.
Notwithstanding all that has been done to reduce the steepness of the natural grades of streets and lots, including the transfer of 20,000,000 cubic yards of earthy material, San Francisco is still remarkably hilly, and may properly be termed “The Hundred-hilled City.”
The cycle of fill, level, and growth continued through World War II. It took more than one hundred years before the people and government said, “Enough!” Even today, there is pressure to just fill a little more or to carve out a bit of a hill.
Woodcut of pre-Gold Rush San Francisco—1848. —Library of Congress
Woodcut view of Yerba Beuna Cove in 1849. The ships begin to accumulate. —Library of Congress
WALK AROUND THE COASTLINE—MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY
The only way to grasp the magnitude of change to the San Francisco peninsula is to look back before the city, state, and federal governments, as well as the locals, started remolding the area. Yerba Buena, as the little settlement that would become San Francisco was known, had a population of 497 in 1847. This swelled to nearly 30,000 by 1849. This amazing growth put tremendous pressure on the city resources. What would become San Francisco began a massive metamorphosis.
Starting on the western Pacific Ocean side, the beach was pretty much as it is now, minus the roads, improvements, and the attempts to prevent the erosion of the beaches. It is hard to fight the Pacific and that holds true up to Fort Point and the Golden Gate (which was named long before the bridge was built). Inland from the beach, Lake Merced remains remarkably intact, with the notable exception that the outlet creek no longer runs to the ocean. Above Lake Merced, a great sand bank extends east from Ocean Beach a couple of miles inland.
The bay side from Fort Point marks a major shift in the landscape. Protected from the wind and ocean waves and sculpted by tides and streams, the bay shore presents a scalloped look of points and coves. A small double bay runs from Fort Point to Black Point (site of Fort Mason), punctuated in the middle by Sandy Point. That section, where Chrissy Field and the Marina District now stand, was nothing more than a sand bank with brackish lagoons, creeks, and marsh behind it in the mid-nineteenth century. Heading eastward into the bay is North Beach, a gently sloping sand beach terminated by North Point, the point of land jutting out northeast of Telegraph Hill. The north shores fail to provide anchorage close to the land, forcing ships to sail around to the hospitable eastern side of the peninsula.
Yerba Buena Cove provides the first available shelter for ships, as it did for the early residents. That harbor serves the little town of Yerba Buena, extending from the cove and wending around the hills to Mission Dolores. The hills jut up from the harbor, and homes fill the small valleys and dot the lower slopes of Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill, and Rincon Hill. Rincon Point, set aside as a military reservation, marks the bottom of Yerba Buena Cove.
View of Black Point (just west of North Beach) from Telegraph Hill—1866. —Library of Congress
South Beach—yes, there was a South Beach—provides an ideal environment for shipbuilding and repair. The gently sloping beach, protected by low sand cliffs, makes it easy to drag a boat out of the water and to launch it again. The moon-shaped beach extends between Rincon Point and Steamboat Point to the south.
South Beach was the center for ship and boat building and repair. —Library of Congress
Looking out at Steamboat Point from South Beach in 1866. —Library of Congress
Mission Bay, just below Steamboat Point, offers access to the Mission region via Mission Creek. The creek runs near Mission Dolores, emptying midpoint into the bay. Only shallow-draft boats can use the tidal bay, and any boat can be stranded by a low tide. Inland rolling sandhills, pastures, marshland, creeks, and ponds make up the landscape. The area is called Potrero Nuevo or “new pasture,” because it was originally pastureland set aside for use by the local inhabitants, according to Spanish law. This area includes Potrero Hill, which terminates at Potrero Point in the bay, and marks the bottom of Mission Bay. Potrero Nuevo terminates at Islais Creek.
Potrero Viejo, “old pasture,” starts below Islais Creek and was added to the Bernal land grant that extends from there to modern day Hunters Point (a long finger of land) and Bernal Heights. The creek defies description and, as such, is optionally referred to as a navigable creek, a bay, a tidal basin, or an non-navigable swamp. The name Islais (pronounced “iss-lis” as in “bliss” and “list”) is not Spanish and is said to be the Ohlone Indian word for the wild cherry trees found growing in the area. The inlet, or bay, was called Islais Creek or Islais Creek Bay depending on the speaker’s perspective and the tide. It reads about three feet deep at average high tide and it is bare mud at low.
The land below Hunters Point to what is now Candlestick Point, San Francisco’s southern border, can be described simply as mudflats, which held little interest for the early locals. Valuable but unusable wetlands, no one even bothered to begin filling them in until the mid-twentieth century.