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11
Islands of San Francisco Bay
By Patrick Totty
Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola observed when he first caught sight of San Francisco Bay in 1776 that it was large enough to comfortably accommodate all the naval fleets of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-six years later, even after warships have been super-sized, his observation is still accurate. Despite having lost 40% of its original 700-square-mile expanse to landfill, this magnificent estuary could still easily host all the world’s men o’ war at anchor.
As famed as it may be, when people are asked to identify San Francisco Bay’s notable islands, most focus on Alcatraz and leave it at that. A few others may mention Treasure and Angel islands, but beyond those three, the responses fall off dramatically.
But there are several lesser-known islands whose characters and histories add immeasurably to the lure of the Bay. Here are short profiles of 11 of the Bay’s most notable islands, including the three mentioned above. Several are hard to get to, but it’s nice to know they are there.
Alameda Island – This almost rectangular island city of 11 square miles and 72,000 inhabitants lies across an estuary from Oakland and is accessed by several bridges and tunnels from the mainland. There’s a lot to savor and like here, from the city’s extensive collection of old Victorian homes and homey 4th of July parade to an attractive downtown and Crown Beach, a sandy strand that’s the best urban bayside beach in the region, with great views of the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco skyline.
Then there’s a climate, which some say is tops in the Bay Area – think San Diego-mild, only five degrees cooler. At the northwest end of town, the decommissioned old Alameda Naval Air Station is slowly being recycled to accommodate housing and industry.
A boat trip up the estuary that separates Alameda from Oakland is like riding an American version of Venice’s Grand Canal – the water swarms with small and large craft, hard at work or pleasure, with a backdrop of rambling houses, shanties and sheds, office buildings, warehouses and docks crowding the water’s edge.
Alcatraz Island – From the Golden Gate Bridge, this 12-acre island looks like a giant ship. “La Isla de las Alcatraces,” Island of the Pelicans, is still the No. 1 tourist draw in San Francisco even though it has been almost 40 years since the federal government closed its most notorious prison here, embarrassed by the unsolved 1962 escape of three prisoners and reluctant to continue patching up old buildings that were slowly dissolving in the salt air.
The short boat trip here from Fisherman’s Wharf is one every visitor and local should make at least once. A tour of the old place impresses with its stories of convicts forced to spend most of their sentences in silence, and the memory of the 1946 uprising that took a company of Marines to quell.
Perhaps most haunting is the small outdoor field where convicts would play baseball, looking out to a view of San Francisco’s hills and skyscrapers a tantalizing 1.25 miles away. Woe to him who hit a homerun: The game was instantly over if a ball went over the fence.
Angel Island – So much history and beauty on this one-square-mile island across Raccoon Strait from Tiburon. The main embarkation is at Ayala Cove, a sheltered little bay that attracted the Spanish for its 300-foot-deep river of fresh water, running from the Sacramento River Delta to the Golden Gate, that still surges through the strait.
Two wide hiking and biking paths, one higher, one lower, circumnavigate the island. From either one the views are grand, especially the one that takes in a sweeping panorama of San Francisco from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate. It’s the kind of picture-window view that some people in neighboring Tiburon have paid $5 or $6 million for.
Other views are closer in – the island’s west side has an extensive collection of restored barracks from the Civil War, and on the east side are the haunting remains of the prison-like buildings that were once used to hold Chinese immigrants, sometimes for years, while officials at this “Ellis Island of the West” dithered and dragged their feet rather than let them enter the U.S.
Ayala Cove has a food concession, bike rentals and docents. The little beach, which looks out on a fleet of pleasure craft that often come to anchor out for an overnight or weekend stay, is backed by a grassy swath perfect for picnicking.
Getting there is fun, too: A small ferry chugs its way over from Tiburon at convenient intervals. While you’re waiting for it on the mainland, check out old downtown Tiburon, a charming throwback to the days when the town was a gritty blue-collar railroad terminal.
http://www.transitinfo.org/AngelTiburon/
Brooks Island – The Bay’s least known island is a 373-acre, mostly flat strip of land just off the Richmond shoreline in East Bay. It’s now a natural preserve that’s home to two caretakers and much avian wildlife.
Before the arrival of the Spanish and the Americans, native peoples lived on the island for about 2,000 years, subsisting on the abundance of fish and shellfish in the tidal flats between it and the mainland. Through the years Brooks also functioned as a quarry, sheep farm and shrimp factory.
It’s now a part of the East Bay Regional Parks District, perhaps the best park system of its kind in North America. Visits to Brooks are permitted, although you have to make your own arrangements to get there (check the URLs below). Things to see include the island’s salt marshes, tidal flats, sandy shoreline and the fine panoramic view from atop its tallest place, a 163-foot rise.
http://www.dolphincharters.com/sfbaydel.htm
http://www.ebparks.org/parks/brooks.htm
East Brother Island– Ships making their way inland toward Sacramento through the strait that separates San Francisco and San Pablo bays had to contend with small islands and an indented shoreline that could be treacherous at night or in foggy weather. In 1874, a lighthouse began operating on East Brother Island, the bigger of two small islands located about a mile north of the present day Richmond San Rafael Bridge. Several families moved to the island, crammed into a .75-acre area and dependent on cistern water and supplies from the mainland.
The lighthouse, also equipped with a foghorn that could be heard for miles, functioned well into the 20th century, finally closing down in 1969 as more modern technologies supplanted it. The Coast Guard wanted to raze the lighthouse, but a group of preservation-minded locals talked it into leasing the island to them under the aegis of a non-profit organization. The Coast Guard approved, and the group began an extensive restoration of the island’s Victorian-era buildings in the 1980s that led to the creation of the East Brother Light Station Bed and Breakfast.
It is one of the most unusual B&Bs in the West. Guests at the four-room B&B must first drive to a funky small-craft harbor at Pt. San Pablo (the café there serves a pretty good breakfast), then ride to the island on a small power boat. Once there, they enjoy a 360-degree view of San Pablo Bay and the waters leading down to San Francisco, and watching marine traffic ply its way up to the ports at Sacramento and Stockton.
Though officially retired, the steam-powered foghorn here still works. Many an unsuspecting visitor, sitting on the innocent-looking structure that houses the horn, has been blasted out of his skin and several feet into the air when the horn has suddenly sounded.
Stays at the B&B are pricey: Rates run from $290 to $420 for a one-night stay, but the meals use gourmet ingredients and are poured with fine wines. Bedding and furniture are opulent, and the sense of isolation is romantic. Day-trippers are welcome, too. You can bring a picnic, enjoy the view and then leave before nightfall.
Farallon Islands – OK, technically these small islands 27 miles west of the Golden Gate are not part of the San Francisco Bay. But if the Ice Age had never ended, thereby raising the level of the oceans, these islands would have been the entrance to the Bay and the likeliest place that people would have chosen to build a “Farallon City.”
Aside from what-might-have-beens, the islands teem with birds – gulls, cormorants, pelicans – as well as seals, sea lions and scientists (there to study the birds and sea life). The waters around the islands support plenty of salmon and sharks, including seal-eating Great Whites – the waters off the Bay Area are the world’s most dangerous interface between humans and Great Whites.
A wilderness preserve protects 141 acres of the islands, including maintop, the second largest island of the group. Seventy-acre Southeast Farallon island, the biggest, is where the scientists live. Visiting here casually just isn’t done. Unless you’ve filed a detailed wilderness use request, the best you can do is head on out to the islands on one of the many charter fishing boats that come out seeking salmon. A useful web site for information on the Farallones is at:
Mare
Island –
For almost 150 years, Vallejo’s Mare Island (about three square miles in
size) was the West Coast center of U.S. naval power. Its great dry docks
maintained the entire Pacific Fleet, built 512 ships over the years and
later home ported nuclear attack submarines. In its heyday in WWII,
46,000 people worked on the island. In 1993, at the end of the Cold War,
the Navy decommissioned the island and turned it over to civilian uses.
The
Navy left some nice things behind. For one, the 18-hole Mare Island Golf
Club, whose greens fees approach the sublime: $55 on weekends; as low as
$25 on weekday afternoons. St. Peter’s Chapel contains a world-famous
collection of Tiffany windows, and “Officers Row” preserves a
neighborhood of Victorian-era mansions that were among the most opulent
ever built for military men on the West Coast.
The
industrial remnants of the island also fascinate: a stone dry dock that
took 20 years to build and was the construction site of some of the most
important ships launched from Mare Island; the abandoned cranes and
workshops in some ways are a western version of Ford’s great River
Rouge plant. Eventually those reminders will be removed as the City of
Vallejo moves to make the island a residential and high-tech center.
You
still have to pass through a guard gate to access Mare Island, but
guided tours are available and easily arranged. Contact the Mare Island
Historic Park Foundation at (707) 557-1538 for information. Tours of
downtown Vallejo, which is drawing a lot of sophisticated former San
Franciscans to its neighborhoods, or a visit three miles up the road to
Six Flags Marine World can round out a tour here.
Marin Islands – Kayakers especially love these two islands, which cover a total of 11 acres and sit a few hundred yards off the Point Lomond Yacht Harbor in San Rafael. East Marin Island, the larger of the two, has eucalyptus groves and several structures on it, including one with large windows that once functioned as a day facility for conferences and corporate getaways. Except for some shrubs and low trees, West Marin island is mostly bare. But it is also the largest heron and egret rookery in the Bay Area, as well as a favored layover for migrating birds.
The islands’ popularity with the avian set has made them the core of a 340-acre national wildlife refuge, a status that forbids landings by anybody who doesn’t have official permission. Still, the larger island’s buildings and woodsy profile conjure images in the minds of passersby of a cozy island refuge, only minutes from metropolitan bustle but far removed in mood.
Red Rock Island – Travelers heading east on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge often notice a red-colored, pyramid-shaped rock at the halfway point, just a few yards south of the span. Red Rock isn’t much to look at, but it’s a pretty important speck of land for surveyors. The boundaries of three counties – San Francisco, Marin and Contra Costa – converge on this 100-foot high rock, a fact that has always made any entrepreneurial fantasies about the island problematical.
In the 1980s, one developer proposed lopping of the top half of the island and constructing a 10-story hotel with a casino on the first floor. The island’s lee side, facing the bridge, would have been turned into a small yacht harbor, with water and power running off of lines attached to the bridge. (The developer even had a good use for the waste material from construction: The island rock, once mined for manganese, meets state highway specs for the roadbed material used in highway construction.)
Alas, there was no way that the three counties, the state, environmentalists or neighboring school districts would have ever come together on this. The would-be developer long ago moved to Southeast Asia and Red Rock remains an interesting sideshow at the halfway point of a high-speed crossing.
Skaggs Island – This creek-bound 4,300-acre island at the top of San Pablo Bay is a haven for migratory birds and a major stop on the Pacific Flyway. It’s part of a relatively intact delta estuary system that did not suffer the fate of the mudflats and marshes rimming San Francisco Bay, which long ago were turned into landfill and salt evaporators. As a remnant of a once much larger eco-system, Skaggs and its neighboring delta islands show just how fecund and rich the shores of the Bay Area once were.
Skaggs itself is closed to visitors as non-profit volunteers continue working on breaching dykes to restore its natural qualities on its north side, as well as dismantling buildings left onsite from when the island was a naval communications center. Nearby Tubbs Island, similar to Skaggs in almost every respect, is accessible via a gate located on the south-facing, Vallejo-bound lane of Highway 37 just east of where it intersects Highway 121 at Sears Point.
Treasure Island – At 1,000 acres – about 1.5 square miles – Treasure Island is one of the Bay’s more ambitious man-made features. Joined to hilly Yerba Buena Island (which the Bay Bridge tunnels through as it spans the waters between Oakland and San Francisco) by a causeway, the island was built in the 1930s by pouring millions of rocks into a shallow part of the Bay to produce a rectangular plot of land.
Within months of its creation, the new island was the site of San Francisco’s 1939-40 World’s Fair, which housed exhibits and attractions in a fantastical collection of buildings based on imaginary “Pacific” architecture. War clouds and the Depression kept the fair from achieving box-office success, but for years afterward locals happily reminisced about the aquacades, the over-the-top buildings, and the naughty feather dances by Sally Rand’s showgirls that produced a few private war clouds of their own.
After Pearl Harbor, Treasure Island immediately became a naval base. Post-war plans called for it to become San Francisco’s new international airport, but the development of giant airplanes and the looming arrival of the passenger jet showed up the island's lack of size for that purpose.
Following the collapse of the USSR, almost all naval facilities in the Bay Area were decommissioned. Treasure Island is now a new mixed-income neighborhood of people living in old Navy housing (much of it detached single homes) with a splendid view of San Francisco’s skyline. Future plans call for the construction of dense housing and possibly conference facilities, a development that could make it a West Coast version of New York’s Roosevelt Island.
The Treasure Island Museum, housed in one of the two buildings left from the world fair, may look familiar since it often served as a backdrop in the “Nash Bridges” TV series.
http://www.dictyon.com/treasure/