Rincon Hill, overlooking Yerba Buena Cove, later provided more of the fill for that doomed portion of the bay. Based on its view and proximity to the town center, it early became the most distinguished neighborhood in the city. As men made their fortunes, they sent for their families. However, they couldn’t ask their wives and children to live in tents and shanties. Mansions sprung up on the hill; some were of timber cut from the redwood forests up north and some reassembled homes originally built on the East Coast. The finest residences on the hill were built between First and Third streets.
Unfortunately for that community, commerce and declining esthetics intervened. China Basin to the south, formerly Mission Bay, attracted unsightly, smoky industries like lumber mills, brickyards, foundries, and the like. It also supported the China shipping trade, spawning convoys of wagons and carts as well as trains coming up from the south bay. It quickly lost the remainder of its dwindling appeal when the city put through the “Second Street Cut,” a ravine 100 feet deep like a knife through the heart of the hill. Earlier, wagons had to go around the hill. Now they could go through it. One home, undercut by the ravine, slid to the bottom. The hill lost its luster. When the invention of the cable car in 1873 enabled easy access to new residences atop Nob Hill, many of Rincon Hill’s well-to-do joined the migration to that area.
View down Second Street prior to cutting down the grade. —Photo courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
View down Second Street after the cut. Second Street Bridge spans the cut. —Photo courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
The excavation of Second Street dividing Rincon Hill. —Photo courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
The Latham residence on Rincon Hill—1872. —Photo courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
The library inside the Latham residence on Rincon Hill—1872. —Photo courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
The exclusive South Park community on Rincon Hill—1866. —Library of Congress
Industry spreading at the foot of Rincon Hill made the hill much less desirous as a prestigious community. —Photo courtesy of San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
Immediately following the Second Street Cut, investors attempted legislation to level the rest of the hill. The governor’s veto prevented the plan from becoming law but the fight continued for years. In the mid-1930s, San Francisco acquired a portion of Rincon Hill for the footing needed to build the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The need for access to the bridge and the lack of influential homeowners left in the neighborhood cleared the way for the final demise of the hill. Plans were drawn for lowering the streets and leveling the remaining bluffs. Rincon Hill became 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