What was the bay area before it was The Bay? As we learn about sea-level changes and continue to see new residents settle and others leave, how does our environment continue to transform? How do we understand our ever-changing landscape? This walking tour takes the watershed known as Mission Creek as an example of the ecologies, peoples, and economies that drastically reconfigured this small region of San Francisco within a period of 200 years. San Francisco, which had only about 1,000 inhabitants in 1848, had upwards of 36,000 by 1852 when it shifted from being the Mexican settlement of Yerba Buena to San Francisco in 1847 and quickly became the largest town in California.
This walk is like a survey of the land, the water, and the people that have come to transform the San Francisco landscape—from the marshlands and bay waters of what is now Mission Bay, to the bustling Mission District. Each part of the walk speaks to the different layers:
1) The layer of the natural landscape,
2) The layer of political economic transformations
3) The layer of social life, migration and settlement
At each point, we want to ask how we shape the environment and how the environment also shapes us. Through thinking about the changing coastline, we will think about the fluidity that challenges San Francisco’s built environment and imagine what the future may continue to bring to the landscape.Directions: Take Bart to Embarcadero and transfer to MUNI light rail line N or T toward Bayshore direction, exit 2nd and King at Oracle Park (Giants field). We will meet at 3rd and King at the Willie Mays statue.
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