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The Reason for the Trip

Mr. Pirate bought a book, Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail, by Daniel Bacon (ISBN 0-9646804-1-6). It's a wonderful book that breaks downtown San Francico into small, walkable areas that have been designated as part of the Barbary Coast Trail. It contains a wealth of very entertaining information about the historical background of what San Francisco was like from the time of the Gold Rush (1849) through the aftermath of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. The original Barbary Coast was along the coastline of the Mediterrean Sea of north Africa .. a wild area populated by pirates and brigands in the times of sailing ships. (Heck, it may still be that way for all I know). Allegedly, during the 1860's, a sailor imbibing in one of the many saloons northeast of current day Portsmouth Square, was heard to compare that general area of San Francisco to the original Barbary Coast and it stuck.

San Francisco's Barbary Coast was well known for its licentious ways, multitude of saloons, loose women, and gambling houses. During its high point in the 1860's and 1870's, it was bordered by (current day) Embarcadero, (current day) Grant Street, north Broadway and Commercial Street ... a 40 square block area! If you look at the picture at the top of the page, you'll see a VERY SMALL area shaded in red. That's the curent day Barbary Coast. The original boundaries are in dotted red. Many, many unlucky men (sailors and non-sailors) were routinely shanghied from shady drinking houses directly to nearby ships bound for the Far East. (In fact, author Danile Bacon claims that the term "shanghied" originated in the Barbary Coast to mean kidnapped & sent to sea.)

And WHY would you think that such a large area was thought of as *coastline* and how could sailors get shanghied to nearby ships??? Well, the shoreline of the bay was substantially inland of where it is now. Most of the financial district is actually fill. The original waterline used to come up to *MONTGOMERY STREET*!!!

Today, the Barbary Coast is merely a historic part of Jackson Square (interestingly, there IS no "Jackson Square" as in a park, but is simply a name for the area).

At the end of this page, I'll put links to historic photos showing just how unbelieveably rustic San Francicco (originally named Yerba Buena) was. While Mr. Pirate and I were researching maps, we discovered that Columbus street, one of the current day main diagonal thoroughfares, didn't even EXIST in the 1800's. It's very, very weird looking at those old maps.

Preliminary Observations

We started out at the Montgomery BART station (off the bottom of the map). We walked north on Montgomery, towards Columbus Avenue. This is the heart of the financial district and the canyons created by the ginormous skycrapers are incredibly windy and shaded from the sun.

As we walked towards our first point of interest, I happened to look up, up, up at one of the buildings.

The perspective from street level to the top of this bazillion story building was dizzying.

The illusion of the world rushing by was augmented by the feathery clouds slipping past the top of the building at breakneck speed.

I'm sure that if I continued walking whilst looking up, I really would have broken my neck.

Then I noticed the entrance to the building was incredible! What a great inspiration for a quilting design!

I do wish I had noted which building it was .... I haven't a clue except that it's on Montgomery closer to Market Street than farther away.

Then, as we continued to walk along, I commented on how people are so busy keeping track of where they are walking, they rarely look UP.

The architecture of many of the old buildings farther up the facade is simply amazing, if only people knew it was there to be admired.

One case point is the building on a cross-street (again, I don't remember which one) that has STATUARY at the roofline! Who KNEW that stuff was there???

I think it would be a great view if your office was directly opposite them.

One other very disturbing realization came to us during the course of this walk ... there is a LOT of brick facades! Both of us being natives to San Francisco, it has been drummed into us that because of earthquakes, brick facades are not used; they are too dangerous. During earthquakes, the bricks will separate from the building and become fatal projectiles to the unfortunate pedestrians below. Once we started noticing all the frickin' BRICKS around us .. not to mention GLASS WALLS on all those high rises ... we realized that the sheer depth of debris during an earthquake is going to be tremendous.

Moral of the story: don't be in downtown San Francisco during the next earthquake. (Personally, I want to be in a hot air balloon.)

But, enough of doom and gloom .... on with the walking tour!

Following the excellent directions in Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail, the map below shows the walking tour we took in red dotted lines, starting at the big green star at the bottom and ending at the red star. The Barbary Coast Trail has markers imbedded in the sidewalk at various place to let you know you're on the right heading.

The green numbers are points of interest from the book and are hot links. If you click on them, a new window will open up with a photo of what's there now and why it was included in the book ... so scroll down when the new window opens.

The shaded green line is what is now considered the Barbary Coast. You'll notice the wavy blue line and shaded blue areas? That's the more-or-less accurate rendition of where the original waterline was during the time of the Gold Rush ... mid 1850's.

That's why the Barbary Coast was not a misnomer ... the WATER was there. Duh.

Please note that the current day Transamerica Pyramid would have been in the water. :-)

The Barbary Coast walking tour ends at Columbus, Kearny and Pacific (the red star).

On with the Tour!

So, now you've walked through the historic Barbary Coast. Mr. Pirate and I took our tour on the day after Christmas, so there was virtually NO ONE in the City. Gosh, it was wonderful. If only all those crazy people would leave, San Francisco would be a lovely place. :-)

For those of you who are interested in seeing what the REALLY EARLY pre-Gold Rush days of San Francisco looked like, I have some incredible links for you.

• Remember I mentioned that the original shoreline went all the way "inland" to Montgomery street? here is a site with a picture about halfway down the page showing the Montgomery Street shoreline.
• From that page: in 1844, about 50 residents. Towards the close of 1846, there were about 200 inhabitants. During 1847,the population grew to 459 souls. And then the Gold Rush hit. In the last half of 1849, immigrants arrived at the rate of one thousand per week by sea alone. During the year, 40,000 arrived in San Francisco, although most headed for the mines and gold fields. The population, at that time, was about 25,000. From 50 to 25,000 in 5 years. Talk about growing pains. Oy.
• The true treasure, in terms of pictures, comes from Ron Heggeler's website. Ron is a professional photographer and a gentleman. His pictures are of large resolution, so if you are on dial-up, you might want to stick to his main website URL. But if you wait through the loading of the pictures, you will be rewarded with some of the most astounding, historic paintings, drawings and photographs of very early San Francisco.
• In 1846-1847, Montgomery street was a coastline. In this picture, you'll clearly see this. Please notice the land promitory on the right side of the picture. Remember the Old Ship Saloon .. the ship that was towed to the Pacific Street pier? Well, that promitory IS where that pier is going to be built.
• An oil painting by George Henry Burgess of 1850 San Francisco. In the picture of the above link, there were ships in the water looking towards a hill. If you now stood on that hill and looked east towards the Bay ... or actually Yerba Buena Cove, as it was in existance at the time .. that would be the perspective of this painting. The island in the distance is Alcatraz. Please note the curve of the water from the green hill on the left to the white point on the right. Between those two points is Yerba Buena Cove. Today, it's completely filled in. Coit Tower was built on the green hill (on the left) and the San Francisco anchorage is sunk into bedrock on the white point (on the right).
• This 1851-1852 map is the most AWESOME artifact I've seen. Compare this map to any contemporary map you have of San Francisco (or even the one at the top of this page) and you'll see how familiar yet different it is. Where the heck is Columbus Street? IT ISN'T THERE! See the blue square, Portsmouth Square, just about on the shoreline? Ever wonder why today's "Port's Mouth Square" is named that since it's so far inland? Well, it didn't used to be.

  The verbage on the map says "Compiled from a map of W.M. Eddy, City Surveyor, January 15, 1851 (from the collection of C.B. Turrill), and maps printed in Parker's City Directory, 1852 and in H.H. Bancroft's History of California, vol 8, page 169. The shaded portion shows the area in process of reclamation from the Bay. Battery Street was built up by 1850. Front Street, north of Market, and Davis, were occupied during 1852 and as the shore line advanced, the wharves were constantly extended into deeper water."

  Please note that the City Surveyor was W.M. Eddy. Anyone familiar with Eddy Street? Well, that's the guy it's named for!

• This is an actual panoramic photograph of 1851 San Francisco ... the same perspective as the Burgess painting, but this is a REAL photograph. Look at the huge amount of masts of hundreds abandoned ships in Yerba Buena Cove.
• Remember the very first point of interest, the Belli Building? This is what's behind the building facade. A very big construction hole. You are looking at the back side of the front walls. If you return to the main URL, you'll see another photo of what looks to be a bunch of broken china. These porcelain shards were recovered by Ron at the Belli Building construction site. These pottery pieces are artifacts from the Gold Rush time.
• And this photo has contemporary labels of prominent points of interest. Things sure did look different.
• Feel free to explore the rest of Ron's website, as it has more very intriguing work.

From the end of the Babary Coast walk, we continued onto the walking tour of North Beach, since it's just "up" Columbus Avenue. Sadly, I never did get around to writing the verbage for that part of our Adventure. Over the passage of time, the details have been lost so there is no "Continuing Adventure to North Beach".

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