Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

Islais Creek or Islais Creek Channel (previously known as Du Vrees Creek, Islais Channel and Islais Swamp) is a small creek in San Francisco, California. The name of the creek is derived from a Salinan Native American word "slay" or "islay", the name for the Prunus ilicifolia wild cherries.

Around the time of the Gold Rush, the area became an industrial hub, and the condition of the creek worsened. After the devastating earthquake in 1906, the city decided to reclaim the creek using earthquake debris, reducing the waterbody to its present size. Though much of Islais Creek has been converted to an underground culvert, remnants still exist today at both Glen Canyon Park and Third Street. Several community organizations are dedicated to preserve these remnants, as they are important wildlife habitats. (more...)

John Muir (/mjʊər/; April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. The 211-mile (340 km) John Muir Trail, a hiking trail in the Sierra Nevada, was named in his honor. Other such places include Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, John Muir College, Mount Muir, Camp Muir and Muir Glacier.

Muir's biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become "one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity," both political and recreational. "Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world," writes Holmes. Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for countless individuals, making his name "almost ubiquitous" in the modern environmental consciousness. According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified "the archetype of our oneness with the earth", while biographer Donald Worster says he believed his mission was "...saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism." (more...)

Fremont /ˈfriːmɒnt/ is a city in Alameda County, California. It was incorporated on January 23, 1956, from the merger of five smaller communities: Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Mission San Jose, and Warm Springs. The city is named after American explorer John Charles Frémont, "the Great Pathfinder."

Located in the southeast section of the San Francisco Bay Area in the East Bay region primarily, Fremont had a population of around 220,000. It is the fourth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the largest suburb in the metropolis. It is the closest East Bay city to Silicon Valley, and is thus sometimes associated with it.

The area consisting of Fremont, Newark (an enclave of Fremont), and Union City (formed from the communities of Alvarado and DeCoto), is now known as the Tri-City Area. (more...)

• Roe Island Light (pictured) is built at the east end of Suisun Bay across from Port Chicago
• Stanford University (pictured) opens in Santa Clara County, with 21 departments, including the Department of the History and Art of Education
• King Kalākaua of Hawaii dies at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco
• The First Unitarian Church of Berkeley is founded

• ... that the vivid colors of the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds (pictured), ranging from magenta to blue-green, come from the brine shrimp and microorganisms that thrive in the water?
• ... that the Laguna Creek watershed debouches into the San Francisco Bay near the site of the ghost town of Drawbridge?
• ... that the chase scene from the 1968 Steve McQueen film Bullitt starts on Cesar Chavez Street (then Army Street) before continuing through San Francisco?
• ... that the title of There There, a 2018 novel about urban Indians in Oakland, California, mirrors Gertrude Stein's quip about the city that "There is no there there"?

• ... that Chinatown, San Francisco's waiter Edsel Ford Fong is fondly remembered for calling patrons "retarded" and "fat", slamming food on tables, groping female patrons, telling patrons to "sit down and shut up" and clearing tables before diners were finished?
• ... that two people died outside of San Francisco's Pier 26 during the 1934 Bloody Thursday Riots?
• ... that the stray dogs Bummer and Lazarus (pictured) were so popular with the people of San Francisco in the 1860s that they were given special exemption from the leash laws?

July - September 2007

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is the oldest and largest Jewish film festival in the world. The three-week summer festival features contemporary and classic independent Jewish film from around the world. The festival was first held at the Roxie Theater (pictured) in San Francisco in 1980.

*more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

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