San Francisco

Between the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Fort in January 1848 and the end of December 1849, San Francisco’s population grew from less than 1,000 to more than 25,000, and the demand for maps of the area increased exponentially. In 1849, surveyor William Eddy was hired to enlarge Jasper O’Farrell’s 1847 plan of San Francisco and provide a standardized basis for buying and selling city land. Several blocks of water lots were plotted on the shallows of Yerba Buena Cove and authorized for sale to raise money for the city’s treasury. In a fateful decision, O’Farrell designated Market Street to resolve the pattern of north-south streets established in the original settlement of Yerba Buena with the diagonal layout of existing lots in the Happy Valley neighborhood on Mission Street. Market Street was planned to be 120 feet wide, reflecting O’Farrell’s belief that San Francisco would one day be one of the world’s grandest cities. An unusual twenty-four-block grid at the top-left of Eddy’s map depicts an unused 1847 “Laguna Survey” located near a freshwater lake called “washerwoman’s lagoon.”

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The San Francisco Bay and its shoreline, occupied by as many as ten thousand Ohlone people in the early nineteenth century, went unexplored by European sailors for nearly 200 years as ships were kept at a safe distance from the foggy shore. Maps such as this represent a remarkable leap forward in navigational science and available information about the coast and waterways of the San Francisco Bay region. A series of engravings at the bottom of the chart depicts three distinct perspectives for navigators: the entrance to San Francisco Bay with Point Bonita lighthouse, Alcatraz Island, and Fort Point designated as prominent landmarks; a view of the Golden Gate from the opposite perspective, showing Telegraph Hill and the settlement along North Beach in the foreground; and the entrance to San Pablo Bay as viewed from Angel Island.

This navigational chart does not describe inland areas and reveals the limited scope of settlement around the bay at this time. San Francisco appears as a small grid of streets occupying a very small portion of the peninsula north of Mission Bay. Mission Dolores is accurately rendered as a frontier outpost on the edge of the developed town. Across the bay, Oakland is similarly rendered as a small patchwork of streets on the shore of San Antonio Creek, with the settlement of Brooklyn opposite the estuary that would later be developed as Lake Merritt. Oakland’s railroad wharf extended nearly to Yerba Buena Island to allow the transportation of goods across the shallow depths of the bay’s eastern shore. Marin County’s rugged coastline had yet to attract any significant settlement, and the shallow inlet on the opposing shore was similarly undeveloped. 

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This United States Coast Survey map, oriented to the west, shows the city’s continued growth following the end of the Gold Rush in 1855. Yerba Buena Cove was rapidly filling in, with only a small portion of its waters still visible as a lagoon bordered by Fremont, Folsom, Stuart, and Market streets. To the south, the marshy shores of Mission Bay remained largely undisturbed, but the area’s future use is indicated on the map in pencil. A grid of blocks extends southward and a long line extending from Fourth Street to San Quentin Point charts the layout of Long Bridge, which will close off the waters when completed in 1867. Mission Street makes its “O’Farrell Swing” southward and connects to two popular horseracing tracks that would be displaced within a decade by rising land values. 

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San Francisco surveyor Vitus Wackenreuder’s map depicts the topography of a larger portion of the San Francisco peninsula and references the vast ranchos granted by the Mexican government during the 1830s and 1840s. The remaining ranchos were under intense pressure by squatters and rival claimants after the area’s population boomed in the 1850s. Portions of the 5,000-acre Rancho Rincon de Las Salinas y Potrero Viejo were auctioned off beginning in 1859. Rancho Laguna de la Merced—more than 2,000 acres between San Bruno Mountain and the Pacific Ocean—was flooded with squatters after an 1853 federal survey declared the land government property. The 15,000-acre Buri Buri Rancho, remained largely intact until the 1870s when the original grant holder’s children were forced to sell to pay for property taxes and legal fees to defend suits by rival claimants.

As land ownership disputes became increasingly violent, particularly at the edge of the city’s development, Mayor James Van Ness enacted an ordinance granting title to those deemed in possession of land west of Larkin Street—then the western boundary of the city—between January and June of 1855. Disputed lands not held by legitimate property holders reverted to the city. Although squatter warfare persisted until 1867 when Congress ruled in favor of the city’s claims, the “Van Ness Ordinance” proved significant as it established the pattern of streets and public squares of the Western Addition. To the south, a similarly gridded area labeled Horner’s Addition reflects the partially realized ambitions of John Meir Horner, a wealthy farmer who purchased 400 acres of the San Miguel Rancho for development in 1852, but lost everything in the financial panic of 1857. At the bottom right of the map, two names for the 173-acre rocky outcropping in the middle of the bay reflect its contentious history. Yerba Buena, the aromatic mint native to this area, inspired the name for both the island and the small Mexican village that became San Francisco. It was previously referred to as Sea Bird Island, Wood Island, and by a name persisting decades beyond its official use—Goat Island. The name derived from its thriving colony of omnivores originally brought to the island in a business venture to provide an alternative to the beef that predominated in Gold Rush San Francisco.

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During San Francisco’s early history, the sparsely populated area at the western end of the city was referred to as Outside Lands. Although the bleak landscape of windswept sand had largely been considered inaccessible and uninhabitable, the city of San Francisco desired this area for its rapidly growing population and successfully petitioned the U.S. Government for ownership in 1866. The Committee on Outside Lands was formed to settle property disputes, plan the area’s 8,400 acres, and build parks that were in short supply in the developed part of the city. The committee paid squatters $88,250 to relinquish claim to the thirty-six acre, 600-foot-high slope that became Buena Vista Park, and they set aside a vast tract of 1043 acres with plans to transform its sand dunes into a public garden to rival New York's recently built Central Park. 

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California’s Tide Land Commission reported on more than 65,000 acres surrounding San Francisco Bay. Approximately 13,000 acres were deemed covered by state patents and legislative grants and were not subject to sale. Roughly 33,000 acres were reserved for canals and other commerce avenues, and 14,400 acres were sold as instructed. Only 4,400 acres remained unsold, including the area between Black Point and Fort Point in San Francisco. A thin brown line indicates “the encroachment upon the navigable waters of the bays in case sale of the submerged bays is continued to the three fathom (18 feet) line.” Areas marked in shades of brown represent the marshland, tidelands, and submerged lands sold to private parties and corporations.

Concern about saving the bay is recorded as early as January 30, 1874, in the form of a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle:

“In the course of an interview with Col. Mendell, U.S. Engineer, that gentleman showed me a map of the Bay of San Francisco which indicated that the State had parted with her title to the tidelands to an extent that there was absolutely nothing left to save… the water area in San Francisco Bay is in round figures 400 square miles, while the land covered by water has passed into private ownership to the extent of more than 300 square miles. If it were lawful to fill in all this submerged land, the harbor of San Francisco would be utterly destroyed.”

Unfortunately, succeeding generations of San Franciscans continued to equate development with progress, and more than a century would pass before the importance of retaining wetlands was widely realized and prioritized.

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Charles Parsons’ view includes a detailed rendering of San Francisco’s prominent features. Developed blocks radiate southward and westward from the city’s northeastern waterfront, with the Ferry Building and Market Street as focal points. Structures, ships, and other features are detailed and plotted on a foreshortened city to allow a downward view. This southwesterly perspective accentuates the development around the enclosed areas of Mission Bay and Islais Creek at the city’s eastern edge. Black plumes billowing from factory smokestacks mark the area’s industries, including rope works, smelting works, and refineries. The city’s prominent buildings are rendered in exaggerated scale, and the key at the bottom references local landmarks, such as the Bay View Racetrack, the Palace Hotel, and Woodward’s Gardens—a zoo, museum, and amusement park located in the Mission District.

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At the turn of the twentieth century, San Francisco was emerging from a series of financial crises and experiencing one of the greatest economic booms in its history. The population grew to around 350,000. A surging real estate market filled city coffers and inspired optimism among civic leaders, who met on January 15, 1904, and formed the Association for Improvement and Adornment in San Francisco. The group, led by former Mayor James Phelan, sought “to promote in every practical way the beautifying of the streets, public buildings, parks, squares, and places of San Francisco . . . in short, to make San Francisco a more agreeable place to live.” Its primary concerns were securing a steady water supply, solving Market Street’s embarrassing variety of sidewalk heights, and establishing new facilities for its cultural institutions that would assure visitors of the city’s refinement.

The Association solicited the assistance of Chicago architect and planner Daniel Burnham, famous for his design of that city’s grounds for the 1893 World’s Fair and, more recently, for his 1901 plan for Washington, DC. Burnham and his young associate Edward Bennett spent several months surveying the city and soliciting suggestions from hundreds of individuals and civic groups before presenting a grand plan. Burnham sought to alleviate the gridlock resulting from the city’s rigid network of right-angle streets by designing a broad, dignified boulevard around the city at the water’s edge with internal diagonal arteries joined by traffic circles. He also designed a network of magnificent open public areas, including a vast park in the southwestern part of the city more than three times the size of Golden Gate Park. Burnham understood that the scope of his plan was enormous, but maintained it was appropriate for a city with San Francisco’s promise and could be implemented incrementally.

The public introduction of Burnham’s plan was met with great excitement and the Board of Supervisors ordered the report to be printed as a municipal document, complete with photographs, maps, and perspective drawings prepared by Bennett and his team of draftsmen. Bound copies were delivered to City Hall just days before the great earthquake and fire devastated San Francisco and presented a new set of priorities in its aftermath.

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Just before dawn on the morning of April 18, 1906, San Franciscans were awakened by a strong jolt lasting twenty-eight seconds. Loss of life and damage to buildings and the city’s infrastructure were immediate, with buildings toppled and water and gas lines broken throughout the city. But the greater calamity resulted from more than fifty fires that raged through the downtown area with firefighters helpless to stop their paths of destruction. Fires burned all the way to the waterfront in much of the northeastern portion of the city, consumed most of the South of Market neighborhood down to Townsend Street in China Basin, and combined at one point to form a three-mile wall of flames raging through the Western Addition.

Desperate to establish a firebreak, the Army ordered mansions along Van Ness Avenue dynamited—a drastic and controversial measure that ultimately helped to arrest the fire there. Fires burned their way through the Mission District as far southward as Twentieth Street until stopped on the third day with the help of a cistern at Nineteenth and Shotwell streets and a single working hydrant at Church and Twentieth streets. The toll of the great earthquake and fire was enormous. It destroyed more than four square miles of San Francisco, killing over 3,000 people. It rendered 225,000 people—over half the city’s population—homeless. More than 500 blocks of homes and businesses were burnt to the ground, with damages estimated at 350 million dollars. Evacuees fled the city on railroads and ferries at no charge, and tens of thousands never returned, resettling across the bay in Oakland and in other Bay Area communities. 

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August Chevalier’s striking pictorial map of San Francisco depicts the city just a few years removed from the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906. At the bottom edge of the map, San Francisco is called “The Exposition City,” a reference to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition that was ostensibly held to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal. Its true purpose was to show that San Francisco was fully recovered and ready to resume its role as the primary cultural and economic center in the West. At the top of the map, illustrations depict the pavilions, buildings, pools, and fountains constructed upon more than 630 acres between Black Point and the Presidio on San Francisco’s northern shore.

Proposed tunnels and car lines are indicated in red, and the map includes detailed and exaggerated representations of the city’s primary monuments and landmark buildings, such as the Ferry Building, a cluster of skyscrapers at “newspaper corner” on Market Street, and the new City Hall—rebuilt across Market Street at the heart of the city’s Civic Center. Mission Bay was now completely developed and a channel south of Berry Street was all that remained of Mission Creek. Plans for further development to the south are reflected by the faint gridlines plotted over the inlet of Islais Creek and the shallows north and south of Hunter’s Point in the bottom-right-hand corner of the map. 

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San Francisco hosted a World’s Fair to celebrate the extraordinary feat of constructing both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge in the midst of the Great Depression. The city’s boosters and civic leaders considered a number of potential sites—Golden Gate Park, Lake Merced, even Candlestick Point—before settling on a particularly audacious proposal, the construction of an artificial land mass on a sandy shoal just north of Yerba Buena Island in San Francisco Bay. Construction began in 1936 under the direction of the Works Progress Administration of the federal government, which was to receive the resulting airport after the fair’s conclusion. The Army Corps of Engineers dumped 287,000 tons of boulders to form a three-mile long seawall and backfilled the lagoon with twenty-five million cubic yards of mud and sand dredged from the bay. The 400-acre island was not yet completed when buildings began to spring up in 1938 to house the myriad attractions that drew seventeen million visitors to this “Pageant of the Pacific” in 1939 and 1940.

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Like other American cities during the booming post-war economy, San Francisco was planning to build a network of freeways to handle increased automobile traffic. This plan indicates ten intersecting freeways and an additional entrance to the city via a “Southern Crossing,” one of a succession of proposed highway bridges spanning San Francisco Bay from Alameda in the east to its western terminus at Third and Army streets. Although the Bayshore (101) and Southern (280) freeways were completed and remain in use today, a vigorous anti-freeway movement halted the construction of the Embarcadero Freeway after only 1.2 miles were completed in 1959, and sustained opposition prevented the construction of additional freeways. After years of proposals to remove the abbreviated Embarcadero Freeway that closed off the city from its waterfront, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake rendered the structure unsafe and it was removed.

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