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 creation of Long Bridge in 1867, connecting Potrero Point, just below Steamboat Point to Hunters Point in the south, provided a solution to the detour around Mission Bay and Islais Creek. Long Bridge became an attraction for recreational fishing, Sunday buggy rides, rowing clubs, and small waterside cafes. The bridge also created an eastern boundary for fill and the rush for land began anew.
Located far from the higher-class residential areas, Mission Bay became an ideal dumping site for San Francisco’s trash. The city generated massive amounts of garbage and it had to be deposited somewhere. Soon the stench at Mission Bay helped fuel the demand for filling the polluted waterway. The rolling sandhills nearby provided an easy supply of clean fill, and the additional advantage of leveling the landscape. Still, the process progressed slowly until 1906 when Mission Bay became the dump-site of choice for the refuse and ruins left by the earthquake and fire. By 1912, it was completely filled in with the exception of a large channel dug at Mission Creek to allow ship traffic access to the commercial district inland. Mission Creek or Mission Channel is still active and bisects the filled in bay now called China Basin, home of SBC Park and the San Francisco Giants.
Mission Bay in 1853—most abandoned ships were left in Yerba Beuna Cove. Still, Mission Bay didn’t escape the city’s desire to fill in the bay. —Library of Congress
One of the largest incursions into the bay occurred after the earthquake and fire of 1906. The city wanted to exhibit its great recovery as well as celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, and it needed land for a world fair. A massive lagoon, separated from the bay by a breakwater and situated between Black Point (Fort Mason) and the Presidio offered an ideal location. The Army Corps of Engineers used a liquid-fill technique, using sand and sediment pumped from the bay, as well as rubble from the 1906 quake, to create the area now known as the Marina District. The fill extended from Chestnut to the present day location of the Marina Green and Yacht Harbor just north of Marina Boulevard.
The subsequent Panama Pacific International Exhibition succeeded on a grand scale. When complete, the fair was razed and homes were built. Ironically, the land that celebrated the city’s recovery was seismically unstable, due to the sandy fill, and sustained major damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake seventy-five years later.
North Beach wasn’t immune to change either; it just took longer. Meigg’s Wharf was built in 1852 on Francisco between Mason and Powell. At that time, now land-locked Francisco ran along the side of the bay. Meigg’s Wharf lasted longer than most, but eventually the city constructed a breakwater beyond the limits of that long pier. They then proceeded to fill it in. It is said today’s Fisherman’s Wharf sits on the site of Meigg’s Wharf. Not so. By 1896, the base of what had been Meigg’s Wharf resided five full blocks south of the bay and Jefferson Street, the current northern-most street along Fisherman’s Wharf. Telegraph Hill provided much of the fill between Francisco and Jefferson.
North Beach in 1866—Francisco Road skirts the beach, now located far inland due to filling in the shallows. —Library of Congress
Hunters Point, a long finger of land, protrudes out into the bay near the south end of the city. Named for an early family of settlers, access to deep water made Hunters Point valuable. Shrimpers, anchovy, and salmon fisherman and shipbuilders all