A series of articles dedicated to mapping the history and lost geographies of San Francisco and its environs
A guide to the lost place names and geographies of San Francisco Spring Valley was an outlying suburb of early San Francisco that developed along the western slopes of Russian Hill in the 1840s and 1850s. Located in what would today be the Cow Hollow neighborhood, Spring Valley was comprised of two distinct settlements: Washerwoman’s Lagoon, a small spring-fed body of water known as far…
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North Beach Burial Ground c.1846-c.1855 Also known as the Powell Street Cemetery, the North Beach Burial Ground was one of the city’s first unofficial burial grounds. Around the mid-1840s people began using the block bounded by Chestnut, Stockton, Lombard, and Powell streets as a burial ground for the early pioneers and Argonauts of San Francisco. According to the Annals of San Francisco…
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I have recently migrated the San Francisco Historical Street Names Index away from Google Fusion Tables since the index, at the moment, lacks a spatial component. The data, however, is still available online as an interactive index through a simple Google Spreadsheet view. The spreadsheet allows users to filter, sort, and view the historical data in a much simpler and…
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A guide to the lost place names and geographies of San Francisco. Today’s entry of lost place names and geographies is Cannon Hill, a hill of about 370 feet that is located at the southeast corner of today’s Presidio. Cannon Hill is the location of the original survey point that outlined the United States claim to the military reservation known as the…
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The 1852 U.S. Coast Survey is one of the first maps that details many of the topographic, physical, and cultural features of San Francisco’s “Mission de Dolores.” We can see details of the rich historical ecology that supported Yelamu Native Americans in the pre-colonial era (part of the larger Ohlone group of peoples), as well as the Spanish, Mexican, and American settlements that came…
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In early August 1859, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approves the establishment of a Jewish Cemetery in the Mission District–the location is not yet determined. Congregations Emanu-El and Sherith Israel relocate their small Spring Valley Jewish cemetery to the recently surveyed and platted Mission lands. The old Spring Valley cemetery, located at the corner of today’s Gough and Vallejo streets, was…
Read More »Defunct San Francisco Reservoir to be Turned Into Park | NBC Bay Area. San Francisco’s newest neighborhood park will be atop of Russian Hill, located at the old San Francisco City Works Reservoir at Larkin and Francisco streets. The old San Francisco City Works operated a flume that delivered city water from Mountain Lake in the Presidio to two reservoirs…
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The History of San Francisco’s Park & Plazas will be a series of articles exploring the history of San Francisco’s parks, plazas, and public squares. Why San Francisco? As a Bay Area resident from 2000-2008 I became very interested in the city of San Francisco as a historical subject. One of my research interests includes how changes in the built environment…
Read More » You can now find an online index of San Francisco’s historical street names. The index contains a list of street names that have been altered over the years, as well as street names that have simply been lost due to changes in the city’s built environment. The reference tool is available to anyone online (scholars, amateur historians, etc.) and includes…
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