Where do you live in San Francisco #2

Where do we live in San Francisco?

We live in the northeast corner of the city, at the bottom of Rincon Hill.  ("Rincon" is Spanish for corner.)  Our building sits right on the edge of what was once a shallow cove of San Francisco Bay.  

In the 1840's, San Francisco (known as Yerba Buena until 1847) was a very small town of about 1,000 people living in small buildings and tents along the edge of that cove, which was named Yerba Buena Cove (pictured below in 1846).  

(From FoundSF.org)

Once the Gold Rush began in 1849, everything changed.  Yerba Buena Cove was the epicenter of activity, with the arrival of hundreds of ships and thousands of fortune seekers.  Yerba Buena Cove was transformed into a harbor with long wharves to accommodate all of the arriving ships.  Over time, the shallow cove was filled in and the wharves became streets, such as Main Street where we live.  You can tell you are standing in the former cove because the land is flat, while the rest of the city is generally hilly.  Most of the Financial District and Tech Hub of San Francisco is located on the filled-in cove.    

In the map 1851 map above, a red dot signifies the location of our building (completed in 2016).  The thick black line marks the shoreline and the shaded area was Yerba Buena Cove

We also learned that a long time ago, during the last ice age, sea levels were much lower and Yerba Buena Cove was not a cove at all.  Instead, it, like nearby Rincon Hill, was dry land sitting on a ridge overlooking a valley.  At the bottom of the valley was a fast-moving river that roared through the Golden Gate, down a tall waterfall toward the Pacific Ocean many miles west of the current coastline.  

When the ice age ended, melting ice raised sea levels.  The Pacific Ocean flooded the valley, eventually creating San Francisco Bay and Yerba Buena Cove.  

Despite the cove being filled in after the Gold Rush, it might reappear in the distant future if sea levels continue to rise.  If sea levels rise a lot, our building will again be on the edge Yerba Buena Cove . . . or perhaps in it.