Port of San Francisco

The Port of San Francisco lies on the western edge of the San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate. It has been called one of the three great natural harbors in the world, but it took two long centuries for navigators from Spain and England to find the anchorage originally called Yerba Buena. A port, as was said in its early days, in which all the fleets of the world could find anchorage. (Morphy)

The larger waterfront area extends from the anchorage of the Golden Gate bridge through the Marina district all the way around the north and then east shore of the city of San Francisco to the city line beyond Candlestick Point.

The Port of San Francisco is currently a semi-independent organization run by a five-member commission, appointed by the Mayor and approved by the Board of Supervisors.

etting

The port area under the commission's control comprises nearly eight miles of waterfront lands, commercial real estate and maritime piers from Hyde Street on the north to India Basin in the southeast. The list of landmarks under port control include Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, the Ferry Building, AT&T Park (formerly SBC Park and Pacific Bell Park, and located next to China Basin) and Pier 70 at Potrero Point. Huge covered piers on piles jut out into San Francisco bay along much of the waterfront, bordered by the Embarcadero roadway.

History

The first landing place on the north-eastern tip of the San Francisco peninsula was a rocky promontory below Telegraph Hill later known as Clarke's Point that jutted into the San Francisco Bay at the line of what is now Broadway and Battery Streets. The Yerba Buena Cove swept inland from the subsequently named Clarke's Point to as far as Montgomery Street to the west, and further south and east to Rincon Point at the south of Market area at the foot of Folsom and Spear streets.

The founding padres of Mission Dolores and the other northern California missions found the jetty at Clarke's Point a convenient landing for their commerce in hides and tallow. It is the same location where Russian ships anchored to load supplies of meat and grain. Early European visitors were the British "Raccoon" in 1814 and the French frigate "Artemise" in 1839. The sloop "USS St. Louis", which arrived in 1840, was the first warship to fly the American flag in San Francisco Bay. On July 9, 1846, the sloop "USS Portsmouth" gave a 21-gun salute and Captain John Berrien Montgomery and his detachment rowed ashore and hoisted the American flag on the Mexican flagpole in the small settlement's plaza, later named Portsmouth Square in honor of the ship.

The earliest development of a port in San Francisco, two and a half miles east of the Presidio, was under the Mexican regime, begun in 1835 as the town of Yerba Buena. Before this time, the port at Monterey was considered the official port of entry to California. Captain Richardson erected the first abode of a European on the hill overlooking the Bay. He became the first harbor master by appointment of the Governor Mariano Guadaloupe de Vallejo.

Whalers took umbrage at the taxes charged by the Mexican governor Micheltorena in 1843, and the outright banning of their trading in the port, then relocated from San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands.

Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican-American War, and Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. In 1847, the first American Alcalde, Lt. Washington A. Bartlett, changed the name from Yerba Buena to San Francisco, "so that the town may have the advantage of the name given on the public map."

The United States governor of the newly occupied territory of California, General W.S. Kearney, renounced the rights of eminent domain of the American government in favor of the city of San Francisco.Clarifyme|date=March 2008 The early city built up on the west side of Yerba Buena Cove around Portsmouth Square.

Immediately, the municipality of San Francisco was given the right, by General Kearney acting as governor of California, to sell "water lots" in the tidelands between Clarke's Point and Rincon Point so the city might gain revenues from the sale. At the same time, the owner of the land at the foot of Telegraph Hill, W.S. Clarke built a timbered wharf and the location became known as Clarke's Point. Later, a substantial wharf convert|750|ft|m|0 long and convert|60|ft|m|0 wide was erected to the depth of water, convert|26|ft|m|0, made the landing available to deep water ships. this project was followed by other wharves built below Broadway and Clay streets, and at Commercial street.

When gold was discovered in California, the first hulk of an old iron revenue steamer, the James K. Polk, was beached at the foot of the bluff near Clarke's Point and became the foundation of the first real passenger landing in the city. It was at this site that the population of San Francisco met the Pacific mail liner the Oregon to receive the official announcement that California had been admitted to the Union. The bluff at the point was quickly leveled and on the land created a wharf was built that became the first regular berthing place, for a short time, for the Pacific Mail steamships. Whatever products came to California, and whatever California produced, had to be carried by ship. In the first year of the gold rush, hundreds of ships were beached and abandoned in the tidal flats of Yerba Buena Cove, and numerous ships were run aground to become parts of the city itself. In 1853, the Vallejo Street wharf lease was granted, and a larger wharf was built.

In the ensuing years, the state legislature passed bills concerning the sale of water lots and authorizing the city to construct wharves beyond its boundary and to set wharfage rates. The battles over control of the waterfront, water lots, and docking privileges began.

The great Central Wharf was built in 1849, named for the central wharf in Boston, and was located where Commercial street is now. Eventually a huge forest of masts from a fleet of abandoned vessels filled Yerba Buena Cove. By 1851, the Central Wharf had ten times more business offered than it could handle, and many new wharves were struck into the bay, including those at Market, Sacramento, Washington, California, Clay, Jackson and Pacific Streets. The filling of Yerba Buena Cove and extensive corruption and legislation led to a period, during the gold rush, when major portions of the city were built on water lots, reclaimed by hook or by crook, on pile driven and rough planking overlain. Early San Francisco was a wharf city of planks and sheds and subject to devastating fires. Half the early city was built on trembling wharves and the scrub and sandy hills were not appreciated, amongst them only a few abodes and scattered tents were found. The early wharves and their buildings fell into the bay and by 1857, the waterfront was a jumble of abandoned ships and rickety piers. Businesses looked for more solid facilities.

Two wharves of notice projected out into the bay from the foot of Taylor street; McMahon's Wharf, and the more famous Meiggs Wharf. They had "T" and "L" shaped extensions, the former was a landing for wood and charcoal. The latter, after Harry Meiggs absconded, became the landing for the Sausalito Ferry.

The Merchant's (or Cousin's) Dock built and repaired ships at the site that is now Kearney and Bay streets, but it was swallowed up when a new location for the seawall was established along the cure that is now the Embarcadero. The Merchant's Drydock was moved to the foot of Harrison and the company established floating Drydocks at Hunter's Point. The North Point dock at the north side of Telegraph Hill was built in 1853 and became the landing site for immigrant ships from Italy and France. Numerous other wharves, privately built and owned, stretched along the northern waterfront; Flint's, the India docks, Cowell's, Shaw's, Law's, Buckelew's, Cunnigham's and the Long Wharf. Many of these wharves were on city lands that might be filled at any time, and most disappeared with the building of the seawall and the modern piers built into the early twentieth century. Amidst intense disputation over ownership and litigation unparalleled in the history of any port in the world, the establishment of the Board of State Harbor commissioners created a San Francisco waterfront as a separate institution by law, having no connection to the city government and indirectly controlled by the state.

Until the 1860s, supplies could also be delivered up Mission Creek by boat to the vicinity of Mission Dolores.

The seawall

The Board of State Harbor Commissioners was established in 1863 and set about the task of building a seawall on the San Francisco waterfront. The project that would eliminate the patchwork and jagged lines of the waterfront, ending it cleanly at the modern Embarcadero. After four years of litigation, the commissioners offered a thousand dollar prize for the best plan for the San Francisco Seawall. One of the designers of the plan, W.J. Lewis was appointed engineer in chief of the project. Another engineer on the project, T.J. Arnold designed the curving waterfront eventually settled on.

A sixty foot wide pit or channel in the mudflats was dredged to a depth of twenty feet below low tide level and huge loads of rock were dumped in from scows and barges at the center line of the trench until they stopped sinking, to make an evenly graded ridge the whole way at the height of mean low tide. The rocks became the foundation for the seawall. Coffer dams were sunk and forms constructed inside them while constant pumping occurred. A mass of concrete two feet thick and ten feet wide was poured over the rocks and a masonry wall seven feet at the base and nine feet high was constructed. The area inside the wall was pumped out and filled with rock, rubble and trash to the city grade. It took the board several years to acquire the leases on private wharves.

The opening of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 halted harbor development and the building of the seawall. The tonnage of vessels arriving at the port dropped by nearly half in the next two years.

By 1871, the commissioners could report that they were in possession of all the wharves along the city front except those that bordered Channel Street between Third and Fourth streets.

In 1881, the Harbor Commissioners began contracting for the construction of the San Francisco seawall, The seawall would take fifty years before completion of the last sections in the China Basin.

Filling the downtown district

Steam powered machines dubbed "paddies" were eating away at the sand dunes and rock hills, especially Telegraph Hill, a few blocks west of the filled zone. Rock was also imported from Sheep Island off Point Richmond. Temporary steam train lines carried the earthen fill for dumping onto the mudflats. Both the Ferry Building and the Southern Pacific Building at the foot of Market Street were built upon thousands of Douglas Fir piles, up to convert|135|ft|m|0 in depth.

The Belt Railroad

In 1890 the port commissioners began developing a series of switchyards and warehouses on the reclaimed land for use of the San Francisco Belt Railroad, a line of over fifty miles that connected every berth and every pier with the industrial parts of the city and railways of America with all the trade routes of the Pacific. For a decade or more, railcar ferry transfers on steamers were the means of carrying railcars to the transcontinental systems. Later, in 1912, the belt line was driven across Market Street in front of the Ferry Building to link the entire commercial waterfront with railways both south and north and across the continent. The line was extended north along Jefferson Street through the tunnel to link up with the U.S. Transport Docks at Fort Mason and south to China Basin.

Modern development

According to port historian Edward Morphy, the achievement of building a great port, "was rendered possible solely by the fact that its Harbor Commissioners, through the succeeding of generations, not only had behind them the credit of the state of California but also were in a position to rise superior to the narrow influences of local politics... The development of the waterfront itself, the Embarcadero, the seawall and piers, the Belt Railroad and the seawall lots, could not have been carried out under private or municipal auspices in the manner so beneficial, so efficient, and so economical as is now apparent."

With the fire after the 1906 earthquake, a new era of port development began on the San Francisco waterfront. In 1909, the San Francisco Harbor Improvement Act was passed. $9 million was allocated by the state legislature and in 1913, Islais Creek and India Basin lands were purchased. The Board of State Harbor commissioners began extensive development along the waterfront, always meeting expenses from the revenues of the busy port.

Upon completion of the modern piers, odd-numbered to the north of the Ferry building and even-numbered to the south, the port of San Francisco became the only port in the United States under a single control. The piers were leased to tenants. By the early 1920s, the port's assets were valued at $50 million and 8 to 9 million tons of merchandise and raw goods were handled yearly.

In the 1920s and 30s, numerous old piers on both sides of Market Street were razed and a smaller number of concrete piers with wider slips between them were constructed. The port also built the six-story China Basin warehouse to bring together ships, rail, and truck for the handling of products. At India Basin, it built a plant to handle vegetable oils.

The federal government in 1922 began dredging a forty-foot channel through the Bay's outer bar in at the entrance to the harbor after 1922 and the dredging of Islais Creek with the so-called reclamation of 30 acres of adjacent creek tidelands.

Two graving docks at Hunter's Point that could accommodate the largest ocean-going vessels, five floating drydocks, eight marine railways, four shearleg derricks and ten floating boom derricks were available.

In the 1920s, the emergence of Los Angeles as the West Coast's largest city--and in particular, as its major industrial center--relegated the Port of San Francisco to a secondary role. For the next few decades, the port steadily but inexorably lost market share to the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, as well as its crossbay rival Oakland. The advent of containerization in the 1960s effectively sounded the death knell for the Port of San Francisco as a major marine terminal, as it had no room to expand to build a large new container handling facility like the 7th Street Terminal at the Port of Oakland. A few piers added container handling equipment, but heavy traffic congestion in the area and poor rail access have long militated against the large-scale development of the container trade at the port. Insufficient clearances of rail tunnels and overpasses have also prevented the development of roll-on/roll-off capability at the port. With limited ability to expand physically as a result of environmentalist opposition to further reclamation and the soaring cost of real estate in San Francisco, the Port of San Francisco has instead become a niche player, specializing in break bulk and dry bulk cargo, ship repair, and ferry services.

The Ferry Building

The San Francisco Ferry Building was built by the Harbor Commission at a cost of less than a million dollars and quickly became one of the most profitable investments in state history. It survived the 1906 earthquake with little damage. In the 1920s, fifty million passengers a year and a great number of automobiles used the ferries. On either side of the ferry slips, bay and river steamers arrived and departed with passengers and produce to and from the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. Beyond were wharves for regular coastal steamers bound for Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, British Columbia, Alaska, and ships bound for Hawaii, Central and South America and the Pacific Rim.

Pier 70

The port of San Francisco owns extensive filled land at the Pier 70, San Francisco, California, Potrero Point district on the southeast bayfront at 20th Street east of Illinois that holds the greatest example of a 19th century industrial village remaining in the western US, site of the first industrial iron and steel mills, shipbuilding and manufacturing center in California. The famous Union Iron Works and Bethlehem Shipbuilding as well as the United States Navy have all had shipworks at the site.Fact|date=February 2008 The current site is now occupied by BAE Systems Ship Repair and Sims Group.Fact|date=February 2008

ource

*Edward Morphy, "The Port of San Francisco", Board of State Harbor Commissioners - 1923, California State Printing Office
*Port Factors, Port of S.F. 1921-33 published by Board of State Harbor Commissioners - Bancroft Library

ee also

*Central Embarcadero Piers Historic District

External links

* [http://www.sfport.com/site/port_index.asp Port Commission website]
* [http://www.sfgov.org/site/port_page.asp?id=31784 Port history]
* [http://www.nps.gov/safr/ San Francisco Maritime Historical Park NPS]
* [http://www.baycrossings.com/archives/2003/02_March/working_waterfront_peter_dailey,_port_of_san_francisco.htm Interview with Peter Dailey, Maritime Director, Port of San Francisco]