S2 Episode 3, Yerba Buena's Original Shoreline and Development

In previous episodes, I’ve mentioned the importance of Alta California’s Yerba Buena Cove to the overall commerce in the District of San Francisco, consisting of the local rancheros, the Mission, and other local inhabitants. This cove was advantageous, for being a year-round, protected spot for mooring, much better than the originally established Presidio of San Francisco. 

My episodes, so far, have focused on the business benefit of Yerba Buena Cove, because, that’s the easiest information to find. But, not the geography of the shoreline and cove, or, the history, prior to the landfill of 1851 - 1853? I wanted to understand how the different occupants of San Francisco related to the same land. Some information is harder to find. Sometimes, that information is under your nose, hiding in plain sight. And, sometimes, it’s just under your feet.

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Transcript

Welcome back dear listeners, and welcome any first time listeners. This is a podcast where I discuss forgotten, or lesser known, early San Francisco history.

In previous episodes, I’ve mentioned the importance of Alta California’s Yerba Buena Cove to the overall commerce in the District of San Francisco, consisting of the local rancheros, the Mission, and other local inhabitants. This cove was advantageous, for being a year-round, protected spot for mooring, much better than the originally established Presidio of San Francisco. 

The foreigner friendly atmosphere additionally propelled the whaling and merchant commerce, along with the easy living lifestyle of the Californios, who supported smuggling, or ‘non payment of duties’ as William Heath Davis Junior called it.

My episodes, so far, have focused on the business benefit of Yerba Buena Cove, because, that’s the easiest information to find. But, not the geography of the shoreline and cove, or, the history, prior to the landfill of 1851 - 1853? I wanted to understand how the different occupants of San Francisco related to the same land. Some information is harder to find. Sometimes, that information is under your nose, hiding in plain sight. And, sometimes, it’s just under your feet.

Prologue

In today’s episode, I research the original shoreline of Yerba Buena. And, as part of doing research on a topic, I always come across interesting information, but, when it’s not on topic for that episode, I leave it out. This isn’t one of those times. 

We are both along for the ride on this one, dear listeners. Are you ready? Here we go…

Today’s episode is largely based on “Down by the Bay: San Francisco’s History Between the Tides”, by historian Matthew Morse Booker. 

Tidelands

When it came to the tidelands, and shorelines, Mexican law followed Spanish law, that followed Roman law, by retaining the area between high and low tide, as sovereign property of the nation. 

Per Mexican law, pueblo land could only be granted to full time residents, and only by acaldes/mayors and other pueblo council. Residents could not own multiple lots and were required to improve the land. Once someone was granted land, the land grantees could not sell their land, ensuring land grants would be inherited. And, that was intentional, to create social, and legal, stability. 

The Pueblo de Yerba Buena land grants were small 50 – 100 vara lots, (138 – 275 feet), and always 200 varas (500 feet) from the shoreline, which is why the earliest homes were built up the hill from the original Yerba Buena Cove shoreline.

The rancho grants were permitted in thousands of acres. Urban versus country life dictated the size of land grants. You need more land to raise and feed cattle. So, rancho grants were larger than pueblo grants. (Never thought about that, but it makes a lot of sense.)

To Californios, the Yerba  Buena tidelands and mudflats were ‘complicated landscape’. The original waterfront of San Francisco, consisted of salt marshes, and mudflats, and was, physically, and legally, unstable land, since you couldn’t easily build there, for a few reasons. But, Americans, even prior to their take over, in 1846, knew this ‘complicated land’ held opportunity. 

While the United States saw opportunity in the Yerba Buena cove, Mexico didn’t relate to the shoreline in the same way. The extremely successful hide and tallow business, focused on grazing land and ranchos, so, why wouldn’t they continue to focus on was clearly working? The Yerba Buena Cove sat empty, as anything more than a place to dock your ships.

To Californios, pueblo land was not as valuable as ranch land, when raising cattle was proving to be lucrative. Hence, the large ranchos in the District of San Francisco area, as opposed to the few permanent households in the actual Pueblo de Yerba Buena. There were a total of 64 land grant applications in the District of San Francisco, before 1846, which encompassed the entire area surrounding the Mission San Francisco de Assis, current day Daly City, Colma, San Bruno, Pacifica, Half Moon Bay, Brisbane, South San Francisco, San Mateo, and I’m sure I’m leaving others out.

Californio’s believed greater population would drive up the price of beef and wheat, so, focus on ranchos and your literal ‘cash cows’, (in the form of hide and tallow). The shoreline could only produce shellfish, which was in abundance, everywhere, in the bay, so that couldn’t be easily monetized, which made the shoreline ‘dead space’.

The land around Yerba Buena Cove consisted of miserable sand dunes, and sand hills, from all the wind. You couldn’t raise cattle, or maintain a farm, near the cove. Plus, Mexico didn’t allow for development 200 varas from the shoreline, even if they wanted to build there. 

Interestingly, it’s Englishman Richardson who realized existing Yerba Buena Coves whaling and merchant commerce, could be better developed, for financial gain, if there was a pueblo to support the already existing port for the incoming ships from Boston and England, in the form of hotels, stores, bars. 

In 1835, Francisco DeHaro, working directly with Richardson, laid out the Pueblo de Yerba Buena, reserving 200 varas from the water’s edge, maintaining the tidelands along the shoreline, exclusively, for Mexican federal use. Yerba Buena becomes a pueblo and a port. And, that’s how the shoreline remained until the 1840s, when the Americans started pressuring Mexico for land closer to the shore. Hold onto this point.

Mexicans, and Californios, saw the tidelands as half empty, while other countries saw the same tidelands half full. 

Shoreline Development

While land speculation, in the form of ranchos and grazing lands, was not a new concept in Mexico’s Alta California … urban real estate development was an American introduced concept. The United States had its eye on Yerba Buena, prior to the actual occupation of 1846. Actually, as early as 1835…

US President Andrew Jackson, in 1835, is said to have tried to purchase the newly established Pueblo de Yerba Buena for 5 million dollars. I’m saying, ‘it’s said’ because I can’t support that claim.

This next point is interesting. On the opposite side of the continent, New York City and Boston had experienced a similar waterfront situation. They found tidelands difficult to legislate because they are part water, part land. Depending on the tide, the boundaries changed, making this area just as physically, as it was legally, unstable. Sound familiar?

The east coast tidelands were eventually sold as ‘water lots’, and New York and Boston filled in the tidelands, creating the most valuable real estate in the port districts. This was based on the 17th century concept of ‘gained ground’ by extending wharves into shallow tides, and then, filling in between the wharves with “garbage, building debris, and other waste”. Aha…

In 1846, California is now American territory, and the development of the New York City and Boston shorelines informed how Yerba Buena would grant tideland ownership. That’s when we start seeing buildings constructed on wooden poles, pushed deep into the mudflats, and very short wharves, built from the shoreline … just like New York and Boston. They literally made land from the sea. 

One country’s dead space became another country’s phenomenal opportunity.

The buildings, during high tide, looked like they were built over water, which, was a beautiful site. But, at low tide, you could see, and smell, the land under the wharves. That’s before the sand, garbage, and rubble, filled in the shoreline, and underneath the wharves. There’s a reason this sounds very familiar … 

I imagine current day Bodega Bay looks a lot like Yerba Buena, and San Francisco of 1846. For my nonlocal listeners, (hello Germany, UK, Ukraine, and Japan) Bodega Bay is a rocky, shallow cove, 40 miles north of San Francisco, and was, and still is, a fishing community, built on the waterfront, with short wharves, just like Yerba Buena once had. 

Sidenote: Unrelated, but cute. Bodega Bay refers to themselves as “a drinking community with a fishing problem”.

I’m skipping forward, a bit, in my timeline, to relay an interesting fact. After the US takeover, between 1846 - 1848, in two years, San Francisco’s government sold 780 land, and water, lots, compared to Mexico’s 68 land grants, in 26 years. 

But, something is missing from the shoreline’s story. The United States saw opportunity in the shoreline. Mexico didn’t see the same opportunity. And, the Spaniards incorrectly believed the Presidio would make a great landing spot. Before the Americans, the Mexicans, and the Spaniards, there was a community, who viewed land, and shoreline, management, very differently. 

Land Acknowledgement 

Let’s go waaay back, to a time when what we now call the city and county of San Francisco, was locally called Yelamu; that’s the name for the people, and the village, before it was Yerba Buena, or San Francisco. Yelamu is part of the Raymaytush Ohlone area, which is the San Francisco Peninsula region. 

The Yelamu people survived, for millennia, on what the bay could provide, occupying the area between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago. Suddenly, the 1830s don’t sound so long ago. 

Between controlled fires, and expert knowledge of the seasons, plants, and animals, the Yelamu thrived. The shoreline was extremely important to their survival. They moved their living location based on the season, and preserved the shoreline, as if their lives depended on it. 

The Yelamu, and all Ohlone, didn’t want, or try, to dominate the land. You worked to protect the land, because the land kept you alive. They worked in unison with land, and nature, respecting their place in the bigger picture. San Francisco’s first environmentalists and preservationists.

The shoreline, marshes, ocean, and land, provided more than enough for survival, and, knowing how to preserve it, took knowledge. The way they treated the land, left the shoreline in pristine condition when the Spanish arrived, and began their series of domineering agendas.

The bay’s bounty was so rich, that there were 425 recorded shellmounds in the Ramaytush Ohlone area, typically located near open water, shorelines, and marshes. Hold onto that. 

Shellmounds are large assemblages of clam, mussel, abalone, oyster, other seashells, soil, rock, animal, human bones, and personal belongings. 

The shorelines were extremely important land to the Ohlone, but, for different reasons than the urban developers of San Francisco, New York City and Boston. The shellmounds, located along the bay, and, shoreline, were sacred burial sites, where you interred your ancestors with that which maintained your life.

Shellmounds were also territorial landmarks, ceremonial gathering places, and where villages were built. Male skeletons were sometimes buried with stone pipes and weapons. Females sometimes buried with mortars and pestles. Baskets, charms, beads, were also buried in the shellmounds. Large amounts of ash were found, as well. This was part of cremations, which was customary when someone passed on.  

In 1909, American archeologist Nels Nelson, as part of his archeological survey, incorrectly concluded,  shellmounds were ‘refuse dump sites’, despite finding human remains in every shellmound he studied. Nelson is who mapped the 425 shellmounds, for posterity. I’ll give him that credit. But, his decision to say these were dump sites, while having found what was clearly a burial site was …  incorrect at best, and tone deaf at worst.

Alfred Kroeber, the "father" of California Indian anthropology, incorrectly, and tragically wrote, (by the way, Costanoan is an outdated reference for Ohlone.) "The Costanoan group is extinct so far as all practical purposes are concerned. A few scattered individuals survive, whose parents were attached to the missions San Jose, San Juan Bautista and San Carlos; but they are of mixed tribal ancestry and live almost lost among other Indians or obscure Mexicans." 

Kroeber, like Nelson, was also incorrect.

What Nelson didn’t understand, was how the Ohlone related to land, which is “Creator made us of the land. The land is of us. And we return to the land.” You buried your ancestors at shellmounds. These weren’t dump sites. 

And Kroeber didn’t realize surviving Ohlone went “into hiding in plain sight” by saying they were Mexican, for political, safety, and social, reasons. For an extended time, in United States history, it was dangerous to say you were Indian, so during census data collection, you said you were Mexican, which was easy to do, if you hid behind the Hispanisized name your grandmother’s grandmother was given at a Mission. I’m being generous by giving Kroeber this reason for why he didn’t know better.

Sidenote, it was illegal, until 1978, to practice native religion. 

The shellmounds being dump sites, and the Ohlone being extinct, are both incorrect, and had, and still have, lasting consequences. People, still, speak about shellmounds as kitchen dumps, and the Ohlone in the past tense, as if they are extinct. You can’t be federally recognized if you are considered extinct. Thanks, Kroeber.

Larger shellmounds took thousands of years to create. The largest, and best known, shellmound in Northern California, was over the Bay Bridge, in Emeryville; three stories high, and three and a half football fields in diameter. Large. And, was…

When you are at the Emeryville Bay Street Shopping Center, or passing Emeryville on the highway, you are walking on, or driving by, Northern California’s largest sacred burial site. Thousands of people, every day, drive over the Bay Bridge, passing an important, sacred, location in early California history. But, that large shellmound has now been flattened, to make a shopping area and parking lot, and Ikea, and apartment buildings.

The rest of what I’m about to say was unknown to me, as a person who has lived here my entire life, and takes interest in early San Francisco history. I found a blind spot in my San Francisco knowledge that was hard to realize, once I saw it. I had to take a few days to process my lack of knowledge. 

Mea culpa in three, two, one … 

Speaking of shellmounds, there were 18 shellmound/burial sites in just San Francisco. Candlestick Point (adjacent to the Cow Palace), current day Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission Creek near the ballpark, Hunters Point, Bayview by Islais Creek, and, near Mission San Francisco de Assis/Mission Dolores. 

Three smaller shellmounds were found near Fort Mason, and South of Market, Civic Center BART, and the Lake Merced area. 

There were 50 village locations, just in San Francisco, where Ohlone artifacts have been discovered. This includes the 18 shellmounds/burial sites. Recall, the Yelamu moved around within San Francisco, based on seasons. Somehow, all of this missed my research radar, until, today.  

A few additional locations are: Howard, Tehama, Stevenson, Carroll, New Montgomery Streets, the corner of 5th and Market, and the Moscone Center.

That information was from the Association Engineering Geologists, “Geology of the Cities of the World” by Greg W. Bartow, Raymond Sullivan, William E. Motzer, and Kenneth A. Johnson. I have some issues with the antiquated research they use to describe shellmounds, without acknowledging newer/accurate research.  https://www.aegweb.org/assets/docs/updated_final_geology_of_san.pdf

425 shellmounds in the area. 18 are in San Francisco. And, I could only tell you about the Emeryville shellmound. This is my embarrassing blind spot.

Most of the 425 Bay Area shellmounds no longer exist. Among the reasons, those coveted, water lots, were located where the majority of the shellmounds were created, (typically near open water, along the shoreline). But, some shellmounds were washed away, and some are now underwater, as the sea level has risen over the past 10 - 15,000 years. This applies to all of the Bay Area and San Francisco.

Matthew Morse Booker, in his book, states “The San Francisco Bay is the largest and most important estuary on North America’s Pacific Coast. 10% of the original 90,000 acres of the original marshes are still apparent.” 

(Only 10%.)  It’s covered over, but, the original marshes have a way of resurfacing. The earthquakes of 1906 and 1989 reminded us of what came before the freeways, shopping centers, financial districts, buildings, homes, and streets.

I described the reserved shoreline for Mexican federal use, and, America’s urban development plan for Yerba Buena’s waterfront and tidelands. And, I am ending with the Ohlone use of the shoreline and land.

The collective ‘we’ have, for various reasons, historically silenced the Yelamu in San Francisco, and the Ohlone of the San Francisco Bay Area, after literally covering it up … with ‘land made from sea’.

I knew all three facets, in differing detail, but, when I looked at them side by side, for the first time, I questioned what I thought I knew, and, frankly, my unconscious bias in not learning about the cultural aspects of the Yelamu, where I live.

I’m closing with land acknowledgement. But, it’s more than land acknowledgement. It’s historical acknowledgement. We can’t change the past, but, we can recognize those who came before us, especially when their history has been silenced, covered, built over, washed away… 

We aren’t really guests, on Ohlone land. Guests are invited, and then they leave. Settler is a better description for what we are. So, I’ll stop using ‘guest’ in this reference.

If you agree you are on Ohlone land, then, what does it mean to say, “You are from here?” After this episode’s research, l’ll be more sensitive by saying “I grew up, here”, versus, “I am from here.” 

And, what does it mean, to say you are a ‘Native Californian’? Are you though? We have Native Californians who can trace their ancestry back to the original inhabitants of this state. I won’t be using that phrase, anymore. Again, my by blind spot. 

Speaking of being historical silenced, the Raymaytush ask you discuss them in the present tense. Kroeber was wrong. They still exist, despite everything.

Visit The Association for Ramaytush Ohlone at www.ramaytush.org  which I am citing with Dr. Cordero’s permission. (Spelled out.)

You could sincerely believe you see the big picture, but, blind spots could be hiding history, underneath your feet. San Francisco has lots of history you can’t see, or easily find. 

I’ve unknowingly walked on San Francisco’s shellmounds, and, sacred burial sites, without acknowledgement. I won’t make excuses for why I didn’t previously know more about this topic, because not a single one of my reasons are valid. 

I challenge you, dear listener, to learn about the ancestral land where you live, and the culture of the original inhabitants. If you don’t know how the original inhabitants lived, you could also be walking over sacred burial sites, without knowing it. We can’t change the past, but, we can acknowledge those who came before us.

No matter how much you think you know, there’s always more to learn.  

I hope this episode provides you with new insight, knowledge, and appreciation for San Francisco’s shoreline, and maybe a new way to consider some things.

If you’re enjoying this podcast, please share it with just one likeminded friend and help spread the word.

Thank you for listening. This is Monkey Block, retelling forgotten stories, from San Francisco’s golden past.